Mortgage declined dream home, devastated. Any underwriters on here?

[TonbridgeorWinchester]

My DIP has been declined to port mortgage and I am in the process of writing an appeal which I was encouraged to do, because of an August 2026 default of £71 that I had no idea about from a previous property. My mortgage is fixed 2.59% for the next 5.5 years.

The points I've included in my appeal:

• Proof the debt has been cleared
• Never missed a mortgage payment
• Had this mortgage 4 years, overpaid £600 monthly for the last 2 years
• Have an income to mortgage ratio of 1.25
• I want to reduce borrowing from 140 to 110/100
• Want to reduce term from 18 years to 9 or 10
• I have good credit: 683 clearscore and 610 transunion
• Never defaulted on a credit card or paid late

I can't believe my dream is being taken from me over a £71 missed payment I had no idea about. It has taken 7 months to sell my house for nowhere near what I wanted and now this.

I am waiting on the appeal outcome.

I am going to use Nottingham's Life Happens mortgage as a last resort but it will add additional expense.

I am so upset....do you guys think the underwriter may overturn the appeal? It's £71 fucking pounds and I just paid it!!!!

I'm not an underwriter but I was previously a mortgage paraplanner.

Which lender is it? If you're not using a broker I would speak to one as they will have a Business Manager at every lender to look at individual cases.

Nationwide. What do you think, you think they might let me port considering all the circumstances? It is being passed to the human intervention underwriting team who will look at the wider picture according to the Nationwide rep who has been helping me.

This happened to me and I contacted the company (mine was for a gas bill I thought was on a DD) and they deleted the account from my credit file. Can you contact the firm?

Was yours defaulted though? And did you get the mortgage in the end? How long did the appeal take?

It was a missed payment and appeared on my credit file like that. Is that different to a default? My mortgage got declined because of it but my broker resubmitted the evidence after the missed payment was removed and it went ahead.

My broker dealt with resubmitting, not sure it was an 'appeal' as such, he just said there was an error and now it's been sorted. I had to wait to the EO the month for my credit file to be published without the missed payment.

ClearScore seems low? Mine is 836 and I have defaults that meant I had to use a specialist broker…

How was your experience using a specialist broker?

I would add that my credit score was really high otherwise.

Expensive but they’re excellent, I’ve used them twice now

I would have thought any broker could place you with that tiny default though
might be worth posting in mortgages U.K. on reddit, there’s some brokers in there

I got turned down by several lenders (including Nationwide) because of the type of property I was buying. If found a lot of them had a yes/no tick-box mentality and would turn down automatically if there was one problem on their 'no' list.

I got it sorted by a broker quickly (it was Alexander Hall, and I think they handle cases where there are credit issues). They said brokers had access to various products that weren't offered on the high street

I agree. You don't need a specialist broker. However if you have already been referred to a human team all you can do is wait really.

That's very frustrating
However I don't think your credit scores are very high, mine is close to 1000 so there must be something else you need to work on generally?

A broker should be able to find you an alternative.

Get a broker - they will fight this for you. You need some additional support, £500 will be worth the money if it’s your dream home.

Mine isn't much higher than the OPs but it's just due to me not really using credit - it actually tanked a bit when I got to the end of the repayments on my phone handset, for instance.

Why are you overpaying a 2.2% mortgage every month why don’t you put that money in a high interest savings account and overpay at the end of the mortgage term?

My offer was declined a few years ago because of a similar amount I was completely unaware of. I was earning great money and had thousands in savings, but none of that seemed to matter. They were just fixated on this £30 late payment from 2019.

I did get the mortgage in the end but with far less favourable terms.

Mortgage companies don’t use credit scores. They look at your credit history and assess you for risk. Nationwide are notoriously risk adverse and do this all the time. As an existing customer you might have some joy with the appeal.

The remedy is really just to get the default removed if you can. Which means speaking to the creditor.

In the meantime if the appeal fails you need to go to a specialist broker who will ensure that you can get an application approved. At worst they will find a higher rate product which you need to use until the credit situation is resolved. So the advice will be to file for a short period and then move to a conventional product.

It is important that you don’t make random mortgage applications - this will worsen the situation.

You won’t lose the dream property. You will lose the preferable interest rate. Which was never for life so you were always going to move to a higher rate. There is a cost be it won’t be for ever.

The lesson, for others, is to check your credit history and deal with any issues before making the application. This should be done at the beginning when you think about moving.

Use a mortgage broker. Ours is fab. He’s gotten us two great mortgages (and I currently have a CCJ due to a stupid unpaid parking ticket that went to the wrong address). I’d never just go via a bank. You’re probably missing out on much better deals. We don’t pay our broker anything. He’s paid by the bank for securing the mortgage.

You don’t pay the broker, the broker gets commission from mortgage provider.

I wouldn't give up hope yet. I think you have some strong points in your favour, and I'd encourage you to challenge the decision.
I'd also suggest checking whether the £71 default was correctly recorded and whether you received the required notice before it was registered. If you genuinely knew nothing about it, ask the creditor for evidence of the notices they sent and consider raising a dispute with the credit reference agencies.
A few things I'd suggest adding to your appeal:

• Explain that this was an isolated, low-value default, not a pattern of financial difficulty.
• Emphasise your four-year mortgage payment history.
• Include evidence of your £600 monthly overpayments.
• Highlight that you're looking to borrow considerably less, not more.
• Show that reducing the term to 9–10 years makes the mortgage more affordable over time.
• Ask for a manual underwriting review rather than an automated credit-score decision.

One important point: if the default really was registered in August 2026, check the exact date and circumstances, as a recently registered default can carry more weight than an older one. My advice would be not to rush into the Life Happens mortgage just yet. Wait for the appeal, and ask your mortgage broker whether the lender can consider the circumstances as an exception. And please don't let this make you feel you've done something wrong. You've maintained your mortgage, overpaid substantially and are trying to reduce your borrowing. I would be cautiously optimistic, but nobody can guarantee an underwriter will overturn the decision. A £71 default doesn't tell the whole story of someone's financial responsibility. Hopefully the underwriter looks at the bigger picture.

You need a decent independent mortgage broker. They will have all the experience to make sure that they find you an appropriate mortgage. Each mortgage company have their own foibles. They can all have quote different lending criteria. Happy to recommend if needed.

I had exactly the same and echo the advice above: get a mortgage broker!
I had a late payment (of £30) that had been settled but it still cost us the mortgage we were trying to get a couple of years later. Broker found us a similar one.

Did you not try to appeal? And did you already have the mortgage and try to port?