The key to our best rate with a homeowner loan.

You may own a property with a mortgage still to repay or own your property outright. Similarly, we understand you may be a homeowner but not currently be living in the property you own.

We will usually be able to see if you are a mortgage holder from your credit record when we do a credit check. If you own a property outright (without a mortgage), we should be able to establish this through land registry documentation without the need to request documentation from you. However, in some circumstances we may need to request further documentation for proof of home ownership when we process your application.

The Homeowner Loan is available for most purposes, apart from debt consolidation. If you require a loan to repay other outstanding debts, you would need to apply for our  Consolidation Loan.

Being a homeowner means you are more likely to be in a stronger, more stable financial position which means we are able to charge less for the loan.

We make our decisions on whether or not to grant you a loan on a number of factors: the amount you want to borrow, your credit history and an assessment of your affordability – that is, what we think you can afford to repay each month.

The evidence we ask you for to make a decision will vary depending on what you are looking for but at a minimum we will run a credit search if we can look at an application at all.  We would only run the credit report if you are at least eligible to apply. The credit search will leave a mark on your credit file.

As a credit union we will do everything we can to offer you a loan, including offering you a smaller amount if we think you’ve applied for more than you can afford, but there will always be times when we can’t even help with a smaller amount.  This is because we have to balance the interests of borrowers with those of our savers whose funds are used to make our loans.  We are also obliged to follow regulations around the affordability of the loans that we make.

This depends on how busy we are.  We tend to be busiest in October and November in the lead up to Christmas. In general we aim to get back to you within 24 hours but this might be two or three days at our busiest times of year.

How quickly you get an answer will depend upon how promptly you provide your supporting information, including pay slips and connecting your bank account.  It’s also good to bear in mind that if you have received your application confirmation it is in the queue and you will be contacted as soon as possible.  Due to the way our online queues operate, chasing your application up with messages asking for an update may slow down your answer.