Remortgaging after an IVA

Can you remortgage after an IVA?

You can apply. Some lenders consider people who have completed an IVA.

Each sets its own criteria, and acceptance is never guaranteed. There is no rule that stops you and no waiting period written down anywhere.

What there is instead is a decision made by a lender, on the day, about the file in front of them. A remortgage to a different lender is a completely new mortgage application, so it is assessed the same way any application is assessed, and an IVA showing on your file narrows the field of lenders.

Some specialist lenders work mainly through brokers, which is why this part of the market is reached through a broker rather than a comparison site. Some specialist lenders consider applicants after an IVA.

A regulated mortgage broker can tell you what applies to you.

Remortgaging and staying with your lender are not the same thing

This distinction matters. Moving your mortgage to a different lender is a remortgage. Taking a new deal from the lender you already have, without moving and without borrowing more, is usually called a product transfer, and each lender treats it in its own way.

Equity and your remortgage

Lenders look at how much of the property is already yours against how much you are asking to borrow. We do not put a figure on it.

The dates that drive the timing

Three dates get tangled together, and separating them makes the timing much easier to plan around. The first is the day your arrangement completed.

The second is the day your credit file caught up and the entry was updated from active to completed, with the debts inside it updated. That update should happen, but it can lag, and a file still showing an active IVA is worth getting corrected before you apply.

The third is the day the entry drops off your file altogether, which is six years from the date the arrangement started, or the completion date if the arrangement ran longer than six years. You do not have to wait for that third date before applying.

It is simply the point at which your file stops carrying the entry at all. Our guide on when an IVA leaves your credit file explains how to work out that date for your own arrangement.

What a new lender looks at

Roughly, and in no fixed order, because every lender weighs these differently. How old the entry is, since a completed arrangement from several years ago reads very differently to one that finished last month.

Your record since it ended, which is the part you control: payments made on time, nothing new in arrears, no sign that the difficulty continued. Your equity, as above.

Affordability, assessed the way it is for any borrower, against your income and outgoings as they are now. Be straight about the arrangement if you are asked, even once the entry has gone from your file.

Some mortgage applications ask directly about past debt arrangements, and an answer that leaves one out is not a technicality. A specialist broker knows which lender fits which history, so you apply where your circumstances are more likely to fit a lender's criteria.

Scattergun applications are the opposite approach: each one leaves a hard search on your file.

If your current deal is ending

Know the date your current deal ends, and check your credit reports so any errors can be corrected first.

If you are still in your IVA

This guide is written for people whose arrangement has finished. If yours is still running the position is different.

Your IVA may include a term about releasing equity from your home in the later stages of the arrangement, and that is a matter to settle with your insolvency practitioner, not something to arrange independently. Taking on new borrowing while an arrangement is live normally requires your supervisor's written consent first, and going ahead without it can put the arrangement at risk.

If your mortgage deal is ending before your IVA does, speak to your supervisor about it early. Nothing in this guide is an invitation to apply for anything while your arrangement is still running.

Come back when your IVA has finished.

Remortgaging with a debt management plan

A debt management plan works differently. It is an informal arrangement rather than an insolvency, so it leaves no single marker with a fixed expiry date.

What it leaves is a set of entries on your credit file, one per account, each ageing on its own timetable, which means the timing question is about those individual dates rather than one. A plan does not affect your existing mortgage as long as you keep paying it.

Where it surfaces is exactly here, at the point you want to move to a new deal, because that is a new application assessed against your current file. Our guide to mortgages after a debt management plan covers what decides the timing in that situation.

How AfterMy fits in

AfterMy is a credit broker, not a lender. We introduce you, and we may earn a commission if you go ahead. Your Comeback Plan records whether you own your home, when your arrangement completed and the dates that matter on your file, so you know your own dates before you speak to a broker.