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Mortgage and Betting

E17yid

Well-Known Member
Jan 21, 2013
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If I don't gamble for a few months and then go for a mortgage will it be okay?

It depends how much you gamble. If after your rent, bills, travel, food, etc you have a disposable income of say £800 and you’re gambling £50-£100 per month they won’t bat an eyelid.

If you’re gambling a lot more then it’s not a good look. They’ll also look at the bigger picture and how your gambling has effected other parts of your finances like account conduct (how overdrawn are you, do you bounce direct debits) your overall debt levels and lending history, shit like that.
 

Rob

The Boss
Admin
Jun 8, 2003
28,014
65,116
If you have a separate bank account to your current account, then it shouldnt come up when you need to show bank statements

obviously a bit late now, but something to think of for the future.

They can see which bank accounts you have when they do a credit search and may well ask for statements from any "secret" accounts. I'm pretty sure they can't see soft credit checks from betting sites but you'll likely have a few of them on your credit search as well.

When we applied for our last mortgage, I had a fair bit of betting going in/out, they commented on it and said it'd mean an "increased risk" which I assume means one of the number in their formula is upped a bit but we still qualified for the mortgage. I'd knock it off completely (i.e. no transactions in/out to any bookies) for the a minimum of 3 months just to be safe though.
 

tototoner

Staying Alert
Mar 21, 2004
29,387
34,059
If you have a separate bank account to your current account, then it shouldnt come up when you need to show bank statements

obviously a bit late now, but something to think of for the future.
This is what I do, I opened a Revoult account basically for stuff like that and transfer 50 a month into it
 

Rob

The Boss
Admin
Jun 8, 2003
28,014
65,116
This is what I do, I opened a Revoult account basically for stuff like that and transfer 50 a month into it

That'll show in your credit check though. My Starling one for the same reason did.
 

whitelightwhiteheat

SC Supporter
Jul 21, 2006
6,517
3,195
For the record - In my old job - If we saw regular, multiple transactions via Paypal we would treat it as gambling - I would see bank statements where people were transferring small transactions of £10 - £20 etc sometimes 10 times a day. Banks and loan providers aren't stupid - They would treat that as gambling.

Also - If it's just £50 a month that you transfer from one account to another they aren't going to care about that. If you're transferring small sums of money back and forth throughout the month you might also trigger anti-money laundering concerns so that's something to be careful of also.

Banks don't expect people to not gamble at all, in moderation - What they don't want to do is to lend to someone who has a problem. Another thing to factor in is your income - They'll calculate gambling issues based on a percentage of your income - if you have a decent income and you're spending £50 a month on gambling, that's not an issue. If you're spending in excess of 40% of your income on gambling, that's a problem. That's how it works, basically.
 

whitelightwhiteheat

SC Supporter
Jul 21, 2006
6,517
3,195
They can see which bank accounts you have when they do a credit search and may well ask for statements from any "secret" accounts. I'm pretty sure they can't see soft credit checks from betting sites but you'll likely have a few of them on your credit search as well.

When we applied for our last mortgage, I had a fair bit of betting going in/out, they commented on it and said it'd mean an "increased risk" which I assume means one of the number in their formula is upped a bit but we still qualified for the mortgage. I'd knock it off completely (i.e. no transactions in/out to any bookies) for the a minimum of 3 months just to be safe though.

Just for the record re: Soft credit checks - These do show when banks have your credit report when you apply for a mortgate or a loan. It shows as "Administrative Review" or words to that effect. They wouldn't massively impact on decision making mind you.
 

whitelightwhiteheat

SC Supporter
Jul 21, 2006
6,517
3,195
It depends how much you gamble. If after your rent, bills, travel, food, etc you have a disposable income of say £800 and you’re gambling £50-£100 per month they won’t bat an eyelid.

If you’re gambling a lot more then it’s not a good look. They’ll also look at the bigger picture and how your gambling has effected other parts of your finances like account conduct (how overdrawn are you, do you bounce direct debits) your overall debt levels and lending history, shit like that.

This is spot on. They will basically have a trigger based on a person's disposable income - The place I worked had a rule that if a person spent more than 40% of their disposable income on gambling over the two months of Bank Statements that we received then the application would be declined. Sometimes if it was close to 40% but there was clearly other issues making payments via DDs etc then that might also factor in to a decision to decline an application.
 
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