Mortgages with CCJ

A County Court Judgement (CCJ) is a court order in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that you may find registered against you, should you fail to repay money that you owe to a creditor.

A CCJ can only be pursued by a creditor when they have exhausted all of their other options for making things right with their borrower.

When you receive a CCJ, you will get a short window of opportunity in which you can pay it off and have it removed from your credit file.

The court will give you 30 days to pay back the amount owed. If you manage to meet this then the court will approach the registry to get the CCJ removed from your credit file.

If you fail to pay back the money that you owe, you will have a permanent record of a CCJ on your credit file for 6 years.

If you have paid back your debt, you will have a satisfied CCJ. If you do not pay the debt that you owe, you will have what is called an unsatisfied CCJ.

Generally speaking, the longer the length of time that has passed since your CCJ was issued, the better a chance you will have of obtaining a mortgage, whether your CCJ is satisfied or not.

If your CCJ is a lot more recent, say within the last year or two and is unsatisfied, obtaining a mortgage may be a lot more difficult.

The amount of CCJs you have attached to your credit file can also have an impact on your chances of mortgage success. If you have one or two CCJs and a larger deposit of perhaps around or above 25%, you may have a better chance of being accepted by a mortgage lender.

Any more than one or two, especially if they are more recent CCJs, you would need a rather substantial deposit to find mortgage success. It is very likely in this case that you would be immediately declined by a mortgage lender.

Some mortgage lenders out there will also have a cap in place, meaning they will only lend to applicants who have below a certain amount of CCJs. You could have a sufficient deposit, but if you have passed their cap, you won't find much success there.

Your CCJ will stay around on your credit file for 6 years from the date that it was issued, so to increase your credit score, you will need to show improvement and reliability.

We would recommend that you minimise your applications for further credit and always keep up-to-date with your ongoing financial commitments.

It’s also good practice to check your credit report regularly and make sure that all of your details are correct.

If you want to dispute a CCJ and want to re-open the case against you, you will need to make sure that you can supply enough evidence to why you shouldn’t have been issued a CCJ in the first place. You can appeal the CCJ by completing a N244 form.

The fee will be quite large for them to reopen your case, however, if the court agree that you shouldn’t have been issued the CCJ, it will be removed from the register altogether.

The maximum length that a CCJ will stay on your credit file for is 6 years. After this point, it will no longer appear on your credit file. The impact on your ability to get accepted for a mortgage depends on how long ago the CCJ was issued and the amount that is owed.

A mortgage broker like us has access to specialist mortgage products, some of which have been made for applicants with CCJs.

We will be able to review your CCJ, seeing how recently that you were issued the CCJ in question and check whether or not you will be able to obtain a mortgage or remortgage.

If you match the criteria for a mortgage, you may need to put down a higher deposit to show your reliability; our advisors will talk you through all of this.