Yes, you can usually get a bad credit remortgage even with a default, CCJ, missed payment or past bankruptcy on your file. The question isn’t really whether a lender will consider you, it’s which lender, at what rate, and whether remortgaging is even the right move compared with staying where you are. Lenders don’t work from a single credit score. They look at what happened, how much it was for, how long ago, and whether it’s settled, and price accordingly.
The equity already sitting in your home does a lot of the reassuring work that a clean credit file would otherwise do, which is why remortgaging with adverse credit is often more achievable than a fresh purchase would be for the same person. Here’s how the different types of credit issues are actually treated, what it costs, and what to do in the months before you apply.
Can I remortgage with bad credit?
In the large majority of realistic cases, yes. UK lenders approve thousands of remortgages every month for people with a default, a County Court Judgment (CCJ), missed payments, or worse on their file, according to guidance from several specialist mortgage advisers. They rarely come from the big high street names, and they’re almost never priced the same as a clean-credit deal, but the door isn’t shut.
What decides your outcome is a combination of factors: the severity of the issue, how recent it is, whether it’s a one-off or part of a pattern, how much equity you have, and your income against the new payment. A single missed mobile phone payment from three years ago is treated completely differently to an unsatisfied £8,000 CCJ from last year, even though both technically count as “bad credit.”
How defaults, CCJs, missed payments and bankruptcy are treated differently
Not all adverse credit is equal, and lenders don’t treat it as though it is. Here’s how the main categories break down.
Missed and late payments
These show on your file as a marker (usually 1, 2 or 3, depending on how many months you were behind) against each account, and they stay for six years from the date recorded. One or two isolated missed payments from more than 12 months ago are often acceptable to mainstream lenders. Multiple recent missed payments, or a pattern across several accounts, will generally push you towards the specialist end of the market.
Defaults
A default is more serious than a missed payment: it means the lender formally recorded that you failed to keep to the terms of a credit agreement. It stays on your file for six years from the default date, regardless of whether you later paid it off. Lender appetite varies widely: some will consider a satisfied default under £500 after 12 months, while others want three years of clean conduct since. The amount, the number of defaults, and whether they’re settled all affect which lenders will look at your case.
County Court Judgments (CCJs)
A CCJ is issued by a court when you’re found to owe a debt and ordered to repay it. It stays on your credit file, and on the public Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines, for six years from the date of judgment, according to guidance from PayPlan and MoneySuperMarket. Paying it off doesn’t remove it automatically: you must pay in full within one calendar month of the judgment for it to be wiped from the register entirely, and simply settling it later still leaves a record for six years. Lenders vary sharply here too: some decline any CCJ in the last three years outright, while others will consider a satisfied CCJ under £500 after as little as 12 months.
IVAs (Individual Voluntary Arrangements)
An IVA is recorded for six years from the date it was registered, or until it’s completed, whichever comes later. During an active IVA, very few mainstream or specialist lenders will consider you at all, and you’d typically need your Insolvency Practitioner’s written permission to take on new borrowing over £500 in any case. Once discharged, a handful of specialist lenders such as Pepper Money and Bluestone may proceed, and once the IVA drops off your file entirely, mainstream options generally return.
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is recorded for six years from the date of the bankruptcy order, though most bankruptcies are discharged within a year, at which point the day-to-day restrictions lift even though the record itself remains on file. Most lenders want to see at least three years since discharge and, practically, treat the full six years from the order as the point at which mainstream lending returns properly, according to MortgageLab. In rare cases where a court rules the bankruptcy resulted from dishonest or reckless behaviour, a Bankruptcy Restriction Order can extend the record well beyond six years, sometimes up to 15.
Debt management plans
A DMP isn’t formally registered as a separate item on your credit file, but the reduced payments you make show up as partial payment markers on each included account, and those individual records also remain for six years from when each was made. Some specialist lenders are comfortable with a DMP that’s been running cleanly for a year or more; others are cautious, since a DMP by definition means you’re not meeting the full contractual repayment.
Does the age of the credit issue change your options?
Yes, significantly, and this is one of the most misunderstood parts of remortgaging with adverse credit. There’s a persistent myth that you need to wait the full six years for any issue to fall off before a mortgage becomes possible. That isn’t accurate for most specialist lenders.
Some published criteria show real flexibility on timing. Aldermore, for example, has stated it will consider historic mortgage arrears, CCJs and defaults from as little as six months old under parts of its criteria. Kensington’s published criteria show certain defaults accepted from six months and certain CCJs from 12 months, depending on the specific product and loan to value, according to Connect Mortgages. The six-year rule matters for how long an issue stays visible on your file, not for how long you’re locked out of the market.
That said, recency still matters enormously to pricing and lender choice, even where an application is technically possible. As a rough guide:
- 0 to 12 months since the issue: your options narrow to a small number of specialist lenders, and expect a meaningful rate premium.
- 1 to 3 years since the issue: more specialist lenders open up, and pricing improves noticeably with clean conduct since.
- 3 to 6 years since the issue: many specialist lenders treat you close to a standard adverse case, sometimes even edging towards near-prime rates.
- After 6 years: the item drops off your file entirely, and most lenders will treat you as a normal applicant, though some application forms still ask whether you’ve ever been made bankrupt or entered an IVA, regardless of the credit file date.
Adverse credit remortgage: specialist lender criteria
High street lenders like the big four banks typically have narrow, automated scorecards and will decline most applications with meaningful recent adverse credit outright. That’s exactly the gap specialist lenders exist to fill.
Names that come up repeatedly in this part of the market include Kensington, Pepper Money, Bluestone, Precise Mortgages, Vida, Aldermore, Kent Reliance and Together. Each has a different appetite: some specialise in defaults, others in CCJs specifically, and a few (Bluestone and Together among them) will look at more severe histories including IVAs, debt relief orders and past bankruptcies. Nearly all of them are intermediary-only, meaning you can’t apply directly. You need an FCA-authorised broker to access their products at all, which is one reason a broker isn’t really optional in this corner of the market.
Common criteria across the specialist tier in 2026 include:
- Deposit or equity: typically 10% to 25%, depending on the severity of your credit history. The more serious the issue, the more equity a lender wants to see standing behind the loan.
- Distance since the last issue: ideally at least six to 12 months of clean conduct since the most recent event, though this varies significantly by lender.
- Income and affordability: specialist lenders still stress-test affordability properly. Adverse credit doesn’t mean a lighter income check, it means a different appetite for the credit history itself.
- Manual underwriting: most specialist lenders underwrite by hand rather than relying purely on an automated score, which is exactly why the story behind an adverse event (redundancy, illness, a one-off dispute) can genuinely change the outcome.
What rate premium should you expect?
There’s no single answer, because specialist lenders price case by case rather than publishing a fixed “bad credit rate.” That said, some rough benchmarks are useful to set expectations.
For milder cases, such as one or two historic missed payments or no meaningful credit history at all, the premium over a mainstream rate can be surprisingly small, sometimes only around 1 percentage point above standard pricing. For a moderate adverse case (a settled default or an older CCJ, with a reasonable deposit of around 15%), rates in 2026 are commonly landing in the 5.5% to 6.5% range, well below the 8% to 10% figures sometimes quoted in more alarmist comparisons, according to Home Me Mortgages. More severe or recent cases, particularly involving IVAs, multiple defaults or a recent bankruptcy, will sit meaningfully higher again, and the available LTV usually shrinks alongside the rate rising.
Fees also tend to run higher on specialist adverse credit products, and redemption terms can be stricter than a standard deal, so it’s worth reading the whole offer, not just the headline rate, before committing.
What to do in the six months before you apply
Preparation genuinely changes outcomes in this part of the market. Here’s what’s worth doing before you approach a lender or broker.
Get your own credit reports first. Pull reports from all three main UK credit reference agencies (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion), since lenders can draw from different bureaux and the picture isn’t always identical across all three. Note the exact date each adverse item was recorded, so you know precisely when it drops off and whether waiting a few months would meaningfully change your options.
Settle what you can, and get it recorded properly. Where you can afford to clear an outstanding default or CCJ, do it, and keep the evidence. A satisfied item is treated more favourably by most lenders than an outstanding one, even though it stays on file for the same six years either way.
Build a clean run of conduct. Six to 12 months of on-time payments across every account (mortgage, credit cards, utilities, everything) before you apply carries real weight with a manual underwriter, even if it can’t undo the older issue itself.
Check your electoral roll registration. Being registered to vote at your current address is a basic identity check most lenders rely on, and it’s a common, easily fixed reason for an otherwise good application to stumble at the first credit search.
Reduce other borrowing where you can. Lowering your credit utilisation and closing or paying down other debt improves both your affordability calculation and how a lender’s automated pre-checks read your file, even before a human underwriter looks at the detail.
Gather your paperwork early. Specialist lenders typically want proof of ID, three months of address evidence, three months of payslips (or two to three years of accounts and SA302s if you’re self-employed), three to six months of bank statements, and your own copies of your credit files so you can explain any issues proactively rather than leaving an underwriter to guess.
Talk to a specialist broker before you apply anywhere. A broker who knows the specialist lender panel can run a soft-footprint decision in principle, which doesn’t touch your credit file, and place your case with the lender most likely to approve it first time. Being declined once can itself become a fresh mark against you, so the goal is one clean application to the right lender, not several scattergun attempts.
Remortgage with poor credit UK: when a product transfer is the better route
Not every homeowner with adverse credit should remortgage to a new lender. Sometimes staying with your existing lender through a product transfer (sometimes called a retention deal) is genuinely the smarter move, and it’s worth understanding why before you assume a fresh remortgage is the only option.
A product transfer means switching to a new rate with your current lender once your existing deal ends, rather than moving your mortgage elsewhere. It typically involves no new credit check, no fresh affordability assessment, no valuation and no legal process, according to Knox Mortgages and MoneySavingExpert. That matters enormously if your credit has worsened since you took out your current mortgage, because a full remortgage to a new lender means a hard credit search and a completely fresh assessment against today’s criteria, which could result in a decline or a much worse rate than staying put.
Product transfer is usually the better route when:
- Your credit position has deteriorated since your current deal started, and you’re worried a new lender’s checks would decline you or price you poorly.
- Your property’s value has fallen, or your loan to value has worsened, since your current mortgage began, making a fresh remortgage elsewhere harder to place competitively.
- Your existing lender’s retention rates are genuinely competitive against the wider market (worth checking rather than assuming, since lenders now compete harder to keep existing customers than they once did).
- You simply want to avoid the cost and hassle of a new valuation and legal process for a modest rate improvement.
A full remortgage to a new lender tends to make more sense when your credit position has actually improved since your current deal (an old default has now dropped off, or a CCJ was satisfied years ago), because a fresh application lets you benefit from that improvement rather than staying priced against your old circumstances. It’s also worth remembering that a product transfer only ever compares you against your existing lender’s own range: it doesn’t test whether a specialist lender elsewhere might now offer you a meaningfully better deal, particularly if your circumstances have moved on for the better.
The honest answer, in most cases, is to compare both properly rather than assume either one automatically wins. A broker can usually run this comparison for you at no cost, checking your current lender’s retention offer against what the wider specialist market would offer, including any early repayment charge that a product transfer would let you avoid.
Remortgage after default: a worked example
Say you took out a default 18 months ago for £1,200 on a credit card, following a period of reduced income, and it’s now fully settled. You’ve had no further credit issues since, your mortgage payments have always been on time, and you have around 30% equity in your home.
This is a genuinely mainstream case for the specialist tier. A broker would likely place this with a lender like Kensington or Aldermore, both of which have published criteria accepting settled defaults from around 12 months at reasonable loan to values. You’d expect a rate premium over a completely clean-credit deal, but in 2026 terms that’s realistically landing somewhere in the 5.5% to 6.5% range rather than anything close to double digits, assuming your income comfortably supports the new payment.
Compare that with a default of the same size that’s still unsettled and only three months old: your options shrink to a much smaller group of lenders, your rate would sit meaningfully higher, and a broker would likely recommend waiting until the default is both older and settled before applying, if your timeline allows it.
FAQs
Can I remortgage with a CCJ on my credit file?
Yes, in most cases, though your options depend heavily on how old the CCJ is, whether it’s satisfied, and its size. Some specialist lenders will consider a satisfied CCJ under £500 after 12 months, while others decline any CCJ within the last three years. A broker can identify which lenders suit your specific situation.
Do I need a bigger deposit if I have bad credit?
Usually yes, though “deposit” for a remortgage really means your existing equity. Specialist lenders typically want to see 10% to 25% equity depending on the severity of your credit history, with more serious issues requiring more equity to offset the perceived risk.
How much higher are bad credit remortgage rates?
It varies widely by severity. Mild adverse credit might only add around 1 percentage point over a mainstream rate, while a moderate case with a reasonable deposit commonly lands in the 5.5% to 6.5% range in 2026. More severe or recent adverse credit sits meaningfully higher again.
Will a mortgage broker charge me extra for bad credit cases?
Not necessarily, though some specialist brokers charge a fee reflecting the extra work involved in placing an adverse credit case correctly. Ask upfront, and weigh any fee against the value of being placed with the right lender first time rather than facing repeated declines.
Is it better to stay with my current lender if I have bad credit?
Sometimes, yes. A product transfer with your existing lender usually avoids a fresh credit check and affordability assessment, which can be the safer route if your credit has worsened since your current deal started. If your credit has improved instead, a full remortgage often lets you access better pricing that reflects your improved position.
How long does a default or CCJ affect my mortgage application?
Both remain on your credit file for six years from the date recorded, regardless of whether they’re later paid off. However, many specialist lenders will consider an application well before the six years is up, sometimes from as little as six to 12 months after the event, depending on the lender and the details of the case.
Can I remortgage after bankruptcy?
Yes, though timing matters. Bankruptcy is recorded for six years from the date of the order, and most lenders want to see at least three years since discharge before considering an application, with genuinely mainstream pricing typically returning once the full six years has passed and the record drops off your file.
Should I apply to several lenders at once to improve my chances?
No, this usually backfires. Multiple credit applications in a short period can itself look like a red flag to lenders and may further affect your credit file. It’s far better to have a broker run a soft-footprint check first and place one well-matched application than to submit several scattergun attempts.
