What Paperwork Will I Need For My Mortgage Application?

While Patrick wasn’t the best at remembering his documents, he at least knew what to keep and what was important for a Mortgage application. Bringing the documents is the easy part – the challenge is making sure you’ve got the right documents. We’ve encountered so many applications that we had to delay due to paperwork and every time it hurts our fickle emotions. We are far happier when we’re helping people get their new homes with minimal stress and delay. In that spirit, we offer this guide to the paperwork you’ll need to bring with you when making your mortgage application. So, in order of importance (not really, they’re all important):

Three months payslips

We’ve no doubt you’ve kept hold of at least a few of these. They’re the good kind of paperwork – the kind that shows proof of you getting money. Hopefully you’ve got the last three months of these available, but if you don’t, you can talk to your employer and they should be able to get copies. We also know that in this digital age many of you just get online payslips, (we hate paper too, so that is cool with us). Just make sure the print offs are authentic and clearly show your name and the name of your employer. This doesn’t apply to you if you are self-employed, of course, but don’t worry we’ve got you covered.

P60 from previous tax year

A P60 shows your total earnings from your job or pension in the previous tax year and will help a lender to take into account any bonus payments you may have received. A two-year record is even better! If you have lost yours, you can approach your employer and ask for a new one, or if you’re really intimidated by the HR person, call the tax office.

Bank statement

Lenders are going to need empirical proof of your financial situation, so keep hold of your bank statements. They will need to be authentic documents, however, so print outs may not cut it. It’s safe to bring the original documents they post to you, or if you’re paperless you should be able to get your bank to print out a copy with the bank’s stamp. If online print outs are the only option then please ensure they clearly show each transaction, your name and account number, (we need to know these are actually your statements), as well as the https address clearly visible. You’ll need the last 3-6 months to show for your application, as well as any savings account statements to demonstrate your total available finance.

Other sources of Income

If you have/are receiving any government benefits you’ll need to provide evidence of this. If you’re earning from more than one source – or are self-employed – you’ll need to provide your SA302 tax return form too, along with supporting documents.

Proof of address

Your current address, obviously, not your prospective one. You don’t live there yet. Proof of address is often a surprisingly difficult document to provide; usually because people assume it’s the easiest bit and then leave it until last minute. We recommend keeping hold of your utility bills and including them in your application. Ideally, we need an original bank statement or utility bill dated with the last 3 months. Your current council tax bill is also perfect. If you have moved around a bit, some lenders do ask for proof of previous address, so it is always worthwhile keeping one bill on file. With so many ways to price your current address, we’ve put together a post on the different documents that lenders will accept as proof of address.

Passport

You know how it is – we need to make sure it’s really you! We know how mad you’d be if someone that wasn’t you tried to get a mortgage in your name. This might seem obvious right now, but we need your real passport. We can’t work off a scan or a photograph of it any more than we could work off of a crayon drawing of it or how it looks in our imagination. There are other ways to prove your identity to lenders which you can find in our post on understanding what paperwork lenders accept.

Any credit cards or loans

We’ll need to know how your credit rating looks because it will be a major factor in how we proceed. We also need to know what expenses you already have in repaying your debts so we can establish what you can afford. We recommend keeping track of your credit rating; several things can affect your score that you may not know of, such as not registering to vote. This will help the lender find you when they do a credit search. After all, they can’t lend to someone they can’t find!

Proof of deposit

If you are purchasing your new home the lender wants to see that you have the money for the deposit, i.e. the difference between the mortgage amount and the purchase price. A bank or savings account statement is fine. If you have pestered a family member long enough for them to have kindly agreed to gift you some or all of the deposit then we will need a letter from them confirming this. They will need to confirm that it is indeed a gift, that it is not repayable by way of monthly payments and that they will have no share in the property. Oh, and we will also need to see a statement from them showing they have the cash in the bank.

Self-Employed

If you don’t have an employer because you’re self-employed, you won’t have access to some of the documents provided for those that are employed. For instance, you won’t have a P60, and while you may have 3 months of pay slips, the lender will need proof that you have been making money in previous years. Often you’ll need to provide two years of accounts, along with bank statements to accompany them. As mentioned earlier, you’ll need to provide your SA302 tax return form too. These documents will also need to include any and all information relating to your different sources of income over that time, and if you’ve had any benefits along with any accompanying paper work.

Keeping track of all this is difficult, and we appreciate that it’s not easy to provide everything right away. But if you have been organised and meticulous you’ll get feedback on your application much faster. We recommend keeping your documents in a safe place to keep them organised. Just don’t forget them like Patrick did – it’s not like there are any canine super-hacker heroes out there that will deliver your documents to you at the last minute. That’d be crazy.

Give us a call on 020 7220 5110 or fill out the form below to arrange a no-obligation chat!

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