Can you get a mortgage with missed payments?

Not all late payments are equal

Your credit file records each month of each account as a status. A single month marked late is a different thing to three consecutive months, and both are different to an account that went far enough behind to be defaulted. Lenders read that history month by month, and their rules are surprisingly specific about how many, how recent, and on what kind of account.

What tends to matter most: whether the missed payment was on a mortgage or rent, which almost every lender weighs more heavily than a card; how recent it is, with the last twelve months mattering far more than anything older; and whether the account is now up to date and has stayed that way.

The part that catches people out

Communications accounts. A forgotten mobile contract after a house move, or a broadband final bill nobody told you about, can register as a missed payment or even a default for a trivial amount. It is one of the most common causes of a decline that makes no sense to the person receiving it, and it is worth checking your file specifically for anything from a provider you have left.

How to actually read the months on your own file

Telling you to check your file is useless without telling you what you are looking at, so: each account on your credit report carries a row of months, one marker per month, going back six years. A marker showing the account was up to date is the one you want. Where it is not, you will usually see a number, and that number is how many months behind the account was at that point.

Two things are worth writing down as you read it. The pattern — three months running behind reads very differently from three separate single months across two years, even though both are "three missed payments" in conversation. And the direction — a row that climbs and then returns to up to date tells a story of something that happened and was dealt with, which is a story an underwriter can work with.

Do this for all three agencies, because lenders do not all use the same one and the rows are not always identical. Note the account, the month and the marker. That list is what makes a first phone call with me useful instead of approximate.

One detail that resolves a lot of confusion: most providers do not report a payment as late the moment it is a day overdue. There is normally a short grace period before anything reaches your file, which is why a payment you know was a few days late often leaves no mark at all — and why one you thought was fine sometimes does.

Being helped can leave a mark too

This is the one that catches decent, organised people. If you ever rang a lender and agreed something rather than simply missing a payment — a reduced amount for a few months, a deferral, a formal arrangement — that agreement is generally recorded. Breathing Space, the government's debt respite scheme, is not itself normally shown on your file, though payments missed during it are. The pandemic payment deferrals were not meant to show on credit files either, though a lender can see them on statements and may ask.

Being recorded is not the same as being marked as a missed payment, and these things exist precisely so that people who engage early are not punished for it. But they are visible, some lenders read an arrangement as a concession rather than a clean record, and nobody is told this at the point they agree to it.

The practical consequence is narrow and worth acting on: if you have ever agreed anything with a creditor, look at how it appears on your file before you apply rather than finding out from a decline. It is usually explainable. It is only damaging when it turns up as a surprise halfway through an application.

What I would do

Establish exactly what is recorded and when, because "a missed payment" from memory and what the file actually says are frequently different. Then match it to lenders whose rules accommodate that pattern — several are relaxed about a small number of late months on unsecured accounts and strict about anything on a mortgage, and knowing which is which is the job.