Buying an apartment or house is one of the most important steps in our lives. Unfortunately, most of us can’t afford to pay it in cash. We need a loan to finance it and that usually means applying for a mortgage. While that’s a quite common thing in today’s world, many wonder what are the things that can negatively affect the application. Among many things, there is also the issue of gambling. Many wonder if the fact that they like to gamble could lead to a bad outcome. In the following paragraphs, we will try to give you a short explanation of how things are usually going in this case.
When you’re applying for a mortgage, one of the first things that the lender will ask from you is to provide three months of bank statements. In other words, the lender wants to check your financial activity, to see if the mortgage is affordable to you.
This means that the bank wants to check if you would be able to support your lifestyle after adding a big commitment called monthly installments. People that work in banks are trained to recognize potential issues and one of the things they are able to recognize is if you gamble or not.
So, you probably wonder what’s happening when the bank finds signs of gambling on your account. Well, it all depends on how much money you are spending on this activity. If we are talking about small amounts, lenders won’t care at all. Simply, lenders don’t care about how you’re spending your money. Their only concern is the risk of getting their money back.
As a result, gambling by itself won’t affect your credit score but, theoretically, when a lender is choosing between candidates, there’s no doubt that a person who spends money on gambling will look less attractive than a person that puts money on the side, into savings.
In practice, the only thing that matters is if you can afford your losses or not. So, one of the most important things to keep in mind is to avoid making payments with a credit card. Lenders like candidates who spend their money, not the bank’s money.
Is it gambling itself that affects the score?
What’s important to keep in mind is that gambling by itself doesn’t affect your score. However, if your credit score is bad because of late payments, for example, the fact that you are also spending money on gambling will certainly be taken into consideration. Still, we can’t say that gambling can be a bigger issue than some other things that cause debts. For banks, every debt is the same.
The bottom line is that gambling may affect the final outcome of your mortgage application in some very small percentage but if you are able to cover all your expenses, no one will care if you’re gambling or not. The only thing that affects your score is if you’re making your payments on time or not.
Finally, if you are still concerned about your mortgage application after reading all this, the best thing you can do is to stop gambling for three months, before you apply for a mortgage. In that way, no lender will be able to recognize a potential risk called gambling.
No deposit bonuses and credit score
No deposit bonuses are one of the most searched phases in UK within the field of online casino and gambling. No deposit bonus basically means that you will get free money (free spins/bonus money) without making a deposit. This is all a marketing trick used by casinos to get you to try their platform in hope that you will enjoy it so much you actually end up making a deposit.
As the casino promise, you will get the bonus money when you register an account in a casino that offers no deposit bonuses. The issue is that the free spins or no deposit bonus often comes heavily regulated in terms of wagering requirements, capped earnings/withdrawals etc. Anyhow, its free money and it is available for anyone living within the United Kingdom and it does not affect your credit score since it doesn’t involve any deposit.
