Check your mortgage eligibility

Your ability to get a mortgage depends on a number of factors, including the amount you're looking to borrow, the size of your deposit and your credit history. Some additional factors to consider include: your employment status and income, your credit rating, your expenses, your life stage, your dependants and any existing debt.

Before applying for a mortgage, it’s a good idea to work out your budget so you have an idea of how much you can afford to cover your deposit and monthly repayments, and still have enough money for any associated fees.

In short, no. As you’re not actually applying for credit, the checker runs a soft search that won’t impact your credit score. Lenders can’t see a soft search on your credit report, but you’ll be able to view it as "Compare the Market - Mortgage" when you access your credit report.

To better understand your credit score, you can get it from your credit report. You’re entitled to one free copy from each of the three credit reference agencies – Experian, Equifax and Callcredit.

• Your personal details and three years of UK address history
• Your annual salary and other income sources, eg dividends, profits, commissions, bonus and maintenance benefits
• Details of your financial commitments, eg credit cards, loans or childcare costs
• If you’re applying with someone else, permission to provide their details.  

Our basic mortgage calculator gives you an idea of how much you could borrow by taking into consideration a multiple of your income. However, our mortgage eligibility checker gives you a more accurate result by running a soft search on your credit file, matching your information with the eligibility criteria of the lenders on our panel.

Our eligibility checking service provides you with a personalised check to let you know how much a select panel of lenders could lend you, along with relevant products and rates from these lenders.

Our mortgage price comparison lets you view mortgage products and rates across the whole market. We return results based on the price of the property you want to buy, your deposit and over how long you're looking to borrow. These results do not provide an indication as to how much you could personally borrow.

You can be sure that the results are accurate as they’re based on a soft search on your credit file and your personal details that have the most impact on your ability to borrow. Your results are valid for a 30-day period, however if your circumstances or lender criteria have changed during this time, the results may no longer be accurate.

However, most lenders will assume that your expenses are similar to that of averages for your location. If you have significantly different living expenses or if you’re considering buying a listed or unusual property, your results may vary.

Your results will be displayed by our level of confidence that a provider is willing to lend to you:

• Where we work directly with a lender and have access to their full lending criteria, we have a higher degree of confidence in the lender’s willingness to lend to you.
• Where we work directly with a lender and have access to some of their lending criteria, we have a high degree of confidence in the lender’s willingness to lend to you.
• Where we don’t work directly with a lender, we access their published lending criteria. As such we have a moderate degree of confidence in the lender’s willingness to lend to you.

If you have questions about your specific situation, it's best to talk to a mortgage adviser. Please speak to our mortgage broker partner moneyQuest on 0141 243 5512.

Compare the Market has selected Runpath Regulated Services Limited (RRS) to provide you with this service. As part of the indicative eligibility checking service, RRS will need to retrieve and use data from one or more of the three main Credit Reference Agencies in order to provide your eligibility results.

For more information about RRS, and about how your data will be used, please see our privacy policy.