A mortgage after bankruptcy. Which date matters.

Two dates, and people plan around the wrong one

The order date is when the bankruptcy was made. Your credit file carries it for six years from that date, then it drops off.

The discharge date is when the bankruptcy itself ended — in most straightforward cases about twelve months after the order. This is the date lenders count from, and it is the one worth knowing precisely.

The practical effect is that the clock people think they are waiting on and the clock lenders actually use are roughly a year apart, and the second one starts far sooner than the six years everybody quotes. If you know your discharge date, I can usually tell you on the phone which part of the market is open to you and which part is not yet.

Roughly how it opens up

In the first year or so after discharge the field is small, the deposit requirement is meaningful and the rate reflects that. As you move further from discharge, more lenders come into range and the pricing improves, in steps rather than smoothly. Several years past discharge with a clean record since, the mainstream market becomes a realistic conversation again.

I am deliberately not putting years and percentages on that. Every lender in this space sets its own thresholds, they move, and a number published on a web page that is wrong by the time you read it is worse than no number. What I can do is tell you where your actual dates put you today.

The question that does not expire

This is the part nobody mentions, so I will. A number of lenders ask whether you have ever been bankrupt — not whether it is on your file, not whether it was in the last six years. Once the entry drops off your credit report, that question is still on the application form, and it still has to be answered truthfully.

Answering it wrongly is mortgage fraud, and it can unravel years later when it is far more damaging than the original bankruptcy ever was. The good news is that it is a question, not a refusal: there are lenders who will consider an application from someone who answers yes. Declaring it and placing the case properly is a much better position than hoping nobody looks.

What helps, between now and applying

• Find the discharge certificate, or the date at least. Everything else follows from it.
• Check all three credit files and make sure the accounts included in the bankruptcy are marked correctly. Errors here are common and they take weeks to fix.
• Build a small, clean record since discharge. Modest borrowing, repaid on time, over months. Nothing dramatic.
• Deposit. It matters more here than in almost any other situation, and it is the lever most within your control.
• Get on the electoral roll at your current address.