Can You Get a Mortgage With Bad Credit?

Short answer: yes, in most cases you can — but not always on the high street, and rarely on the cheapest rates. Bad credit narrows your options and raises your costs; it doesn't usually close the door. The lenders who say no are mostly the household names. Behind them sits a whole tier of specialist lenders whose entire business is lending to people the high street has turned down.

If you've had a default, a missed payment, or a county court judgment, you're not in a rare position. According to the Pepper Money Specialist Lending Study, around one in six UK adults has experienced some form of adverse credit in the last three years — millions of people, many of whom go on to buy homes. This article explains what lenders actually look at in 2026, what it means for your deposit and rate, and the concrete steps that put your application in its strongest possible shape. Speak to an FCA-regulated mortgage broker before making any borrowing decision — everything here is for planning, not a quote.

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Can you actually get one?

Yes — if you can meet a specialist lender's criteria. These lenders are sometimes called adverse-credit or subprime lenders, and they exist precisely because mainstream banks tightened up after the rate rises of 2023–2024. Where a high-street bank runs your application through an automated credit score and declines anything that trips a flag, a specialist lender is far more likely to look at the whole picture by hand: what the credit issue was, how serious it was, how long ago it happened, and whether your finances are stable now.

There's an important myth to clear first. There is no single minimum credit score for a UK mortgage. Each lender sets its own criteria, and the three-digit number you see on a credit app is the agency's own estimate, not something lenders are handed and ranked by. Specialist lenders in particular weigh your current affordability and the age of any problems far more heavily than a headline score. A clean recent track record can outweigh an old blemish.

What counts as "bad credit"

"Bad credit" isn't one thing — it's a ladder, and where you sit on it changes everything. Lenders broadly treat these markers, from least to most serious:

• A one-off late or missed payment — minor. A single late credit-card payment a couple of years ago often won't affect a mainstream application at all.
• Defaults — registered when a lender decides an account has broken down, usually after three to six months of missed payments. More significant, but very common, and many lenders will consider them once they're a year or two old.
• County Court Judgments (CCJs) — a court order for an unpaid debt. A separate legal process that generally hits harder than a default.
• Debt Management Plans (DMPs) — an arrangement to repay debts at a reduced rate. Lenders want to see it completed, or well established.
• Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) and bankruptcy — insolvency markers, treated most severely. Usually need to be discharged and a clear period to have passed before mainstream-ish options open up.
• Repossession — the most serious for a mortgage application, since it directly concerns property lending.

Two variables sit across all of these and matter as much as the marker itself: recency and severity. A satisfied default from four years ago is a very different proposition to an unsatisfied CCJ from last month. Lenders run a tiering or "cascade" system — the more recent and serious the issue, the bigger the deposit they'll want and the higher the rate they'll charge. As problems age and your recent behaviour stays clean, you cascade back up towards better terms.

How long credit problems follow you

This is the single most useful thing to understand, because it's often the difference between applying now and waiting. In the UK, your credit report holds the last six years of your history. Defaults, CCJs and bankruptcies all stay on your file for six years from the date they were registered — and then they drop off automatically. You don't have to do anything; once six years have passed, lenders simply won't see them.

A few details that catch people out:

• The clock runs from the original date — the default registration date or the date the CCJ was issued — not from when you eventually pay.
• Paying doesn't remove it early. Clearing a default changes its status from "unsatisfied" to "satisfied," which lenders view more favourably, but it stays on file for the full six years. The exception: a CCJ paid in full within one month of judgment is removed entirely.
• Impact fades with age. A marker does most of its damage in the first year or two. An old, satisfied issue with two years of clean payments behind it carries far less weight than the date alone suggests.

The practical takeaway: if a problem is about to age past a key threshold — past 12 months, past three years, or off the file entirely at six — it can be worth timing your application around it. A broker can tell you whether waiting a few months meaningfully widens your options.

What it means for your deposit and rate

Bad credit costs you in two currencies: a bigger deposit and a higher rate. How much of each depends on where you sit on the ladder above.

Deposit. For minor, historic issues, you may still reach 90% or even 95% LTV — a 5–10% deposit — though your choice of lender narrows. As issues get more recent or serious, lenders ask for more skin in the game: 20–25% deposits (75–80% LTV) are common for adverse-credit products, and the widest choice of lenders tends to open up around 25–30% down. For recent or severe problems, expect to need 25–35% or more.

Rate. Adverse-credit mortgages carry a premium over standard rates — broadly in the region of 1% to 4% higher, scaling with severity and deposit. To put that in context: if a standard two-year fix is sitting around 4.5% (the Bank of England base rate is 3.75% as of early 2026), a borrower with moderate adverse credit might be looking at roughly 6–7%, and someone with serious recent issues could be higher still. Over a 25-year term that gap is substantial, which is why the goal is almost always to clear the issues, rebuild, and remortgage onto a mainstream rate later rather than treating the bad-credit rate as permanent.

One warning worth heeding: some adverse-credit products pair a tolerable headline rate with steep arrangement fees. Always compare the total cost over the deal period, not just the rate. Run any figures through the monthly payment calculator so you're comparing real monthly costs, not advertised percentages.

Check your credit report before you apply

Before you speak to any lender, you need to see exactly what they'll see. That means pulling your credit report — and ideally checking all three of the UK's main credit reference agencies, because they don't all hold identical information. A default or error can sit on one file and not another, and lenders may check any of them.

The three agencies are Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Checking your own report is a "soft" search — it never affects your score, and you can do it as often as you like. Reviewing it before you apply does three things: it shows you where you actually stand, it lets you find and dispute mistakes (which are more common than people expect), and it stops you wasting a "hard" application search on a lender you were never going to pass. Look specifically for accounts you don't recognise, defaults or CCJs that shouldn't be there or are recorded incorrectly, and whether you're on the electoral roll at your current address. If something is wrong, raise it with the lender that reported it first, then the agency if that doesn't resolve it.

How to improve your profile first

If your purchase isn't imminent, a few months of deliberate effort can move you up a tier — meaning a smaller deposit and a better rate. The highest-impact moves:

• Register to vote at your current address. It's free at gov.uk/register-to-vote and it's a basic identity and stability signal every lender checks.
• Pay everything on time, every time. Recent, consistent on-time payments are the strongest counterweight to an older blemish. Setting up direct debits removes the risk of forgetting.
• Bring down your credit-card balances. Using a high proportion of your available credit drags your score; getting utilisation down (ideally under about 30%) helps.
• Satisfy what you can. Clearing defaults won't erase them, but a "satisfied" marker reads far better than an outstanding one — especially once it has a little age on it.
• Don't apply for new credit in the run-up. Each hard search leaves a mark; a cluster of them shortly before a mortgage application is a red flag. Freeze new applications for at least three to six months beforehand.
• Avoid unarranged overdrafts in the months before applying — lenders read recent bank statements and slipping into an unauthorised overdraft suggests strained finances.
• Keep your address and job stable where you can. Continuity reassures underwriters who are assessing risk by hand.

None of this is glamorous, but on an adverse-credit application it routinely does more for your terms than saving an extra few thousand in deposit.

Why a specialist broker matters

With clean credit, you can often go direct to a lender and be fine. With adverse credit, a specialist broker stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the single biggest lever you have. Here's why.

The lenders who accept your specific profile aren't the obvious high-street names, and many of them are broker-only — you can't approach them directly at all. A whole-of-market adverse-credit broker knows which lender treats a two-year-old satisfied default leniently, which one will consider a CCJ after six months, and which won't touch an IVA until it's discharged. Crucially, they can match your credit file against lender criteria before a hard search is ever run — so you're not collecting rejections (and the search marks that come with them) by applying blind. They'll also help you present the application well: the right documents, a clear explanation of what happened and why it won't recur, and the strongest framing of your current affordability.

A note on fees: brokers charge for adverse-credit work, but the range is wide. Some charge a few hundred pounds, payable only when you have a formal offer; others charge far more. Ask up front what the fee is, when it's payable, and whether they check mainstream lenders before specialist ones — a good one always will, because the cheapest mortgage you qualify for is the goal.

What to expect from the application

Adverse-credit applications lean on manual underwriting — a person reviewing your case rather than a pure algorithm — so being organised matters and decisions can take a little longer. Have these ready before you start:

• Your credit reports from all three agencies, with any errors already disputed.
• The last three months of bank statements, ideally clear of unarranged overdraft use.
• The last three months of payslips, or SA302s and tax-year overviews if you're self-employed.
• Proof of your deposit — savings statements, or a gift letter if family are helping.
• A short, honest explanation of any past credit issue and what's changed since.

The encouraging part: this market is stable, not fringe. The overwhelming majority of specialist mortgages stay up to date once they complete, which is exactly why lenders keep offering them. Bad credit makes the route longer and the early years pricier, but for most people it remains a route onto the ladder — and one you can usually refinance off later, onto a mainstream rate, once the issues have aged out and your record is clean.

The short version: see your report first, fix what you can, get the timing right around the six-year clock, and use a specialist broker to reach the lenders that fit your profile. Bad credit changes the price of buying a home — it rarely removes the possibility.