Getting a Mortgage With Missed Payments is Possible

How late or missed payments impact your application

Late or missed payments, whether on credit cards, utilities, mobile phones, mortgages, or other secured debts, will affect your mortgage options by reducing the number of lenders willing to consider you.

In some cases, it will limit your options to just a handful of lenders; in other cases, it will only remove a handful of lenders from the total pool willing to consider you.

How severely it affects your options depends entirely on your own personal situation.

What mortgage lenders care most about

Whatever you do, don’t panic!

The bad news:

Finding a mortgage with late or missed payments can be a bit like navigating a minefield.

Depending on the severity, finding a mortgage can be difficult, and for most, finding the best deal from lenders that will actually accept you is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The good news:

Lenders are out there for almost every situation, including well-known high-street names offering the most competitive rates.

The real challenge isn’t whether a mortgage exists, it’s knowing which lenders are the best match for you…

It’s situations like this where expert advice really counts

Our bad credit experts help people navigate situations just like yours every day. Because they have so much experience, they know the intricacies of each lender’s policy inside out.

Within a 10-15 minute chat, they’ll already know:

• Which lenders are highly likely to accept you
• Which ones might, if the application is presented in the right way
• What their requirements will be
• How much you can borrow
• What rates you can expect

For those who need the certainty quickly, they can usually get you an agreement in principle with a lender within one working day or less.

Why our advice works better

The right advice makes all the difference when dealing with missed or late payments on your credit report. That’s why Online Mortgage Advisor takes a unique, channel-expertise approach.

• Specialist brokers: Our channel experts focus exclusively on helping bad credit borrowers, helping people like you every day.
• Strict vetting: We carefully select and train our advisors to ensure they have the expertise to deliver better outcomes.
• Customer-led approach: We recognise and reward advisors solely based on customer feedback, using AdvisorScore and other real-world feedback, ensuring they stay focused on the best outcomes for every customer.

Everybody’s unique – and it’s important to speak with someone who understands your situation without judgment, and can offer solutions you can trust.

Our service is hassle-free, and you’ll be protected by our 3 guarantees.

👉 Find out more about our channel-expertise approach.

👉 Meet the late payments mortgage experts.

If you’ve been declined due to late payments, don’t panic

Getting turned down can feel demoralising if you’ve already found a property, but it doesn’t mean you’re out of options.

People come to us all the time after being told “no” – and this is our speciality.

In most cases, we get them approved. Often with a better deal than the one they were turned down for.
Sometimes, we even secure a mortgage with the same lender who originally declined them. How the application is presented makes all the difference.

Why it happens, and why it’s fixable

No advisor can be an expert in everything. Not all advisors have the experience and knowledge to handle situations like yours.

That’s why many people are incorrectly told they can’t get a mortgage, tragically missing out due to a gap in knowledge.

And if there really are no options right now (rare, but it happens), you’ll at least walk away knowing:

• Why you were declined
• When you will be eligible for a mortgage, what needs to change and what rates you’ll be looking at

Remember: we have our approval guarantee.

Late vs missed payments: what’s the difference?

The true definition here is a bit ambiguous. Different people apply different meanings to it.

But, to make things simple and ensure we’re speaking a common language here, for our purposes:

• Late payments: You made the payment, but after the due date.
• Missed payments: You didn’t make the payment at all, meaning you’re now in arrears and, potentially, on the path to a default.

So what’s the difference between being in arrears and having defaulted?

• Arrears: You’re behind on payments but still trying to catch up. For example, if you miss one month’s payment but keep making your future payments on time, you stay one month in arrears. Each month you fall further behind without catching up, your credit file shows a higher “status” number – 1 month = Status 1, 3 months = Status 3, and so on.
• Defaulting: Most lenders will record a default on your credit file if you are six months in arrears (Status 6). This means the account is formally marked as unpaid, and the company may start more serious recovery action. Bear in mind, even though it’s “defaulted,” you still legally owe the money.

Companies differ in how quickly they report late payments

Every company is different.

• Some report late payments very quickly
• Some will not report it until the end of the calendar month, so if your payment date was the 20th,  and you paid it on the 22nd, they might not report it at all

It will usually impact your credit score as soon as it is reported.

Missed mortgage payments are treated more severely

Missed mortgage payments (and other forms of secured debt) will impact your application once registered on your credit report. They are treated as more severe, and navigating the complexity of different lenders’ criteria will become even trickier.

You can view these filtered results in our comparison tool to get an idea of how lenders view this.  Most won’t accept any missed mortgage payments within the last 1-2 years. Others may still consider you, depending on exactly how recent the missed payments were and how many missed payments there are.

Click “More info” on the specific mortgage in question to view the lender’s official policy.

Missed payments on a credit card or store card

Lenders usually treat missed payments on credit cards, store cards, or mail-order accounts less severely than missed payments on secured debts like mortgages.

However, they can still significantly limit your options, especially if the missed payments are recent or repeated.

Credit cards are the most common form of revolving credit, and many lenders take a unique approach to them in their policies.

• A single missed payment from a long time ago is unlikely to cause major issues
• Some lenders set a maximum number of missed payments allowed within a certain time period
• Others may have no strict maximum, but expect squeaky-clean conduct for a set number of months or years

Lenders assess missed credit payments differently, which is why it is so important to match your history to the right lender’s criteria.

You can get an idea of lenders’ different policies by viewing these filtered results in our comparison tool and clicking “More info” on the different results.

Some lenders will consider your explanation

Whilst missed or late payments will always raise a red flag to some extent, context can make a real difference with certain lenders.

Some will take a purely numbers-based, “computer says no” view.

However, others will look deeper at the circumstances behind late payments before deciding.

For example:

• If a missed credit card payment was an accidental one-off event, and your record has been clean before and since, many lenders will take a more relaxed view.
• If the missed payments happened during a period of temporary hardship, like illness, redundancy, or separation, some lenders will be willing to consider the background, especially if you can show how the situation was resolved.

The key thing to understand is that not all lenders have the same approach, and not meeting their official policy isn’t always the end of the road. If you’ve got a lender willing to listen, and your explanation is presented in the right way, options that might otherwise have seemed closed can open up.