Credit cards and mortgage application

[pastaofplenty]

DH and I are planning on applying for a mortgage in a few years time.

We will (hopefully) have a reasonable deposit and no loans or debt (mortgage free though not first time buyers and no personal or student loans)

We do have three credit cards in my name. These will be at zero by then (not much debt on either) however does having three cards look odd?

How many (if any) is the right amount to hold?

For info one card I've had for about 15 years, the other two for less than two years.

Credit limit on each is around £3.5K

Should I cancel the newest two and keep the oldest one or cancel all three or leave as they are (but with no debt on any of course)?

Thanks

Well I'm no financial advisor / mortgage broker, and it's many years since I've applied for a mortgage, but my understanding is 3 credit cards, with no debt is considered a positive thing - shows you are credit worthy, and able to pay what you owe.

Either way, this will hopefully bump your question for someone a bit more up to date than me

keep the cards ime they just want to know you will not miss a payment, though we recently re-mortgaged and we had to pay one card off fully (Barclaycard) that was quite high though! they weren't bothered about my other 2 card which are only used for balance transfer.

they are very picky now though so am only going on what I had to do

It will be good to show that you have a credit history and that you pay your credit cards on time. However sometimes lenders (so I have heard, I am not a professional!) can be nervous about you having lots of unused credit as potentially you could get your mortgage and then run up big credit card debt.

If I was you, I would keep one in your name and also get one in your DH's name to give him a bit of credit history too.

We recently remortgaged, I have multiple credit cards, some with pretty high credit limits (but all but one with a 0 balance). Lender would have seen them on credit check, but we had no problems getting the deal we wanted.