Article by Tom Magor - 27th August 2021

Is My Address On A Credit Blacklist?

If you’re suddenly declined credit there could be any number of reasons behind the lender’s decision, including a lack of credit history, adverse information on your Credit Report or simply an issue with your affordability. If there’s one thing that you can be confident of, it’s that your address isn't on a Credit Blacklist.

Credit Reference Agencies do not hold blacklists of people or addresses that should not be granted credit – they simply maintain and share information based on facts, derived from a variety of sources. Lenders then use this information to assess potential customers. There are no such things as credit blacklists.

What if a previous occupant has unpaid debts?

Your Creditworthiness is down to you and the information held about you, so there’s no chance of you being affected by an address itself. If you move into a property where the previous occupants had serious money problems, you are not responsible for their debts and cannot be pursued.

Even if they’ve moved without informing the lender and there are debt collectors on your doorstep, you are not liable for any of the former resident’s debt and you should not be left out of pocket or unable to take out any form of credit of your own. It can be scary, but the law is on your side.

It is possible for other people to affect (for better and worse) your ability to get credit, but only where a Financial Association exists, which would have been created as a result of a joint account between yourself and another person.

Despite this, some consumers still jump to the conclusion that there must be something negative associated specifically with their address which has caused their application to be declined.

How can my address affect my ability to get credit?

The only way your address is likely to be able to affect your ability to get credit is when a lender cannot find a match and so is unable to assess your Credit Report, or when they can only find information relating to your previous addresses. This can happen for a few reasons – for example because the address you have provided is in a different format to the one being reported by lenders (and held by Credit Reference Agencies).

Other situations that could cause a problem are where you move to a new build that isn’t listed on the databases used by lenders and other organisations yet, or because you have not lived at an address long enough for your Credit Report to catch up with you.

That last point is a good example of why it is important that you always update your address with any existing lenders and check your Credit Report for yourself shortly after you have moved to make sure that your personal information has moved with you.

Where you have lived at an address for anything less than three years, lenders are likely to ask for previous addresses in addition to your current one in order to give themselves the best possible chance of finding you, but a lack of up-to-date information could still make it more difficult for them to build a concise enough picture of your Credit Rating and result in your application being declined.

If you have been turned down for credit and don’t know why, or if you want to check that your address is recorded in the correct format on your Credit Report, you can see for yourself what a typical lender would see with checkmyfile. You’ll also be able to see if you are financially connected to anyone else, plus lots more besides.

If you haven’t already, you can try checkmyfile free for 30 days and then for just £14.99 a month afterwards, which you can cancel online at any time. It’s the UK’s most detailed Credit Report, with information from all three Credit Reference Agencies, not just one.

Updated by Sam Griffin on 27 August 2021

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Launched 25 Years, 35 Million Credit Scores & 8 Million Credit Reports Ago

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