Mortage advice with recent bad credit score

[Kidsanchaos]

Hi wondering if anyone has any advice on this...

Background, I co own house with ex, still married, separated since 2020, I moved out and rented for 3 years he stayed in the co owned house. Landlord sold my rental property July 2023 so I moved back into co owned house.

Me and ex had finally agreed to take money out to do essential maintenance on co owned house to then sell and split equity. We applied to take money out on the mortgage in December but were refused as unbeknown to me I'd left an unpaid utility bill from rental property. So I had over 12 months of missed payments on my credit record. I had been on clear score which had shown nothing and my credit score looked healthy. But on equifax it shows up and my score is badly damaged. Before this I have always had a good credit score never missed a payment on anything else.

I'm trying to figure out how long this will take to repair enough to get my own mortgage. How long will the missed payments (which have now been paid) affect me being able to get a mortgage and by how much. I know they stay on credit report for 6 years but unsure how long or how much the impact will be on my ability to get a mortgage.

I'm looking to get a mortgage in 18 months-2 years max and would be using equity from selling this house for my deposit, obviously now as the repairs cant be done the value of this property is affected and also another 18 months of disrepair on top of that if nothing gets done.

One option is to sign me off the mortgage and my ex can reapply to take the money for the maintenance out on mortgage himself with an agreement of how we will split the equity when it's sold. But then will coming off the mortgage negatively affect me when I try to get my own mortgage as my credit score is low? Surely staying on the mortgage and making regular payments will help improve my damaged credit score rather than coming off it? Also would I essentially be a first time buyer again if I sign this house over to ex and what are the implications of that re buying my own home?

Just to add even with no maintenance done on this house, if we sold as it is now, I'd probably come away with 40-50k. House prices in this area around 190-220k so I'd need mortgage of around 150-170, affordability isn't the issue when I've done the online calculators but it's the poor credit score that I can't factor in.

Quite a complicated situation but I'm hoping there might be someone on here who can give me advice.
Thanks in advance

To clarify, the 12 months’ of unpaid bills relates to a period after you had moved out of that address? You didn’t actually miss any payments? You need to contact the energy supplier and explain this - they’ll probably ask for proof such as a checkout inventory or letter from your landlord. After that they should be able to update your account with your move out date so that it now longer shows as missed payments in your name.

If that’s not the case and you should have been paying the bills, then as long as a default was never registered, as a rule of thumb many lenders have lending criteria which is less concerned with historical late or missed payments but just stipulates that you must not have any late or missed payments within the last six months, or more than two in the last 24 months. If you aren’t looking to remortgage until at least 18 months time then this is likely to be less of an issue then: just apply through a broker and explain the situation and a broker will be able to identify lenders with the most lenient criteria when it comes to missed payments.

@ComtesseDeSpair Thank you that is quite heartening to hear, I was thinking I might have to wait 3 years plus or at worst the whole 6 years but hopefully not.

I have an appointment to speak to mortgage adviser but it's not for a couple of weeks and I was worrying myself far too much.

To clarify, yes the dept is mine. I had a final utility bill when ending my tenancy, it was a lot higher than usual so I stopped the direct debit and sent an email asking them to look into it for me. I never heard back from them and completely forgot about it till December when the bank told me it was missed payments from me that was stopping us take money out on the mortgage.
I've since paid the outstanding debt and when I've looked into it thankfully it hadn't gone into default, it was just the same missed payment over and over for 15 months. So annoyed at myself as like I said I've never missed any other payments ever.

Hopefully the mortgage advisor can give me more advice on what I can do to better improve my chances of getting the mortgage I need. I already had an 18 month timescale from now with the works we were going to do on this house and then selling it, so 2 years, if I wait till then, isn't that much longer.