Special situations
Bruised credit
You missed some payments, the score is in the 500s, and things have stalled. There is a route; it is a different one. Most mainstream banks have a score floor and stop reading below it. A second tier keeps reading: what happened, when, and whether payments are normal now. Usually the problem is not the number. It is that nobody has explained the stretch of time behind it. I order the file, find the tier that can approve it now, and give you a plan to bring the score back.
Last updated 2026-09-01
With a score like this, can anything be done?
Yes, usually not with the same tier of lender.
Mainstream banks generally have a score floor, and below it they stop. A second tier, usually called alternative or B lenders, keeps reading: what happened, when it happened, and whether things have been normal since. Whether it gets approved depends on the whole file.
Is the score the only thing a lender looks at?
No. Most lenders read the story in the report, not just the number at the top.
The same score can be two completely different files. Problems clustered around a separation two years ago with clean payments since is not the same as missed payments last month. An illness, two hard years in a business, a customer who never paid — the report shows the result and never the reason. Somebody has to write the reason down. That part is my job.
Which items get in the way the most?
Generally the recent ones, and the ones tied to housing or the government.
Missed mortgage or rent payments, accounts in collections, judgments, and money owed to CRA tend to matter most. With a bankruptcy or a consumer proposal, what counts most is how much clean credit you have rebuilt since discharge. A credit card paid a few days late carries less weight than most people assume.
What is an alternative lender, and how much more does it cost?
More, and I will not dress that up: a higher rate than a mainstream lender, usually a lender fee, generally a one or two year term, and often a larger down payment.
What you get for it is a lender that reads the whole file. It is a trade of money for time, and whether it is worth it depends on whether you can fix what needs fixing inside that time. If you cannot, it is not a bridge, it is a delay. I say that out loud before you sign anything.
How do you move from an alternative lender back to a mainstream one?
With one to two years of a clean record, and a fresh application at renewal.
The exit plan is part of the decision on day one. The work during that stretch is specific: never a late mortgage payment, balances down, no new debt, tax filings caught up if that was the issue. A few months before the term ends I go back to the market for you. Whether it lands depends on the file, but nobody should walk in without the plan.
How long does it take for a score to come back?
Bringing balances down usually shows up within a month or two. The negative entries themselves take years.
Generally, negative information stays on a Canadian credit report for around six years, with some variation by province and between the two bureaus. But the weight fades with time. An entry from three years ago and one from last month are not the same thing to a lender. You do not need it to disappear. You need it to get old.
Should you fix the credit first, or buy first?
It depends on which step is stopping you, and on how much time you have.
If the gap is small and a few months would close it, waiting is usually cheaper. If the gap is large, or you have already signed a contract and the clock is running, it is a different calculation: solve what is in front of you, then plan the move back. That decision deserves actual numbers, not a hunch.
Three things you can do this week
First, pull your report from both Equifax and TransUnion and read them yourself. The two often disagree, and most people only check one. Checking your own is a soft inquiry and does not affect your score. If you see an account you do not recognize, or an old item you already settled still sitting there, it can be disputed.
Second, bring every card's balance down rather than clearing one card entirely. Generally, lowering utilization across all of them moves faster than emptying one. Third, do not apply for a new card, a car loan or buy-now-pay-later for the next few months. And if you have an account in collections, ask me before you pay it. The order and the timing of that payment affect how the file gets submitted.
Common questions
A bank declined you. Does that go on your report so everyone sees it?
The decline itself is not recorded anywhere, and another lender has no way of seeing that you were turned down before. What does stay on the report is the hard inquiry from having applied. Several hard inquiries clustered in a short window can make the next lender read the file more cautiously, even though no single decline is visible to them. That's why it's worth finding out exactly what stopped the last application — income, ratios, credit, or the property — before submitting another one, rather than applying again and hoping for a different result.
Your bankruptcy or consumer proposal is finished. How long until a mortgage is possible?
What matters most isn't really the discharge date itself — it's how much new credit you've rebuilt and how consistently you've managed it since then. Most lenders want to see a continuous stretch of normal, on-time payments behind you, not just a calendar milestone that's passed. The discharge paperwork itself and the circumstances that led to it also get looked at, since a one-time setback reads differently than a pattern. There's no single fixed waiting period that applies to everyone; it genuinely depends on the specifics of the file, which is worth reviewing rather than guessing at from a general rule.
Does checking your own score lower it?
No. Checking your own score is a soft inquiry, and soft inquiries don't affect your credit score at all, no matter how often you check. A hard inquiry is different — that's when a lender or card issuer pulls your report because you've actually applied for something, and that's the kind that can add up if there are several in a short period. Checking your own score as often as you like is one of the few things in this process that genuinely carries no downside.
Can an unpaid phone bill show up on credit?
Telecom accounts are generally reported to the credit bureaus in Canada, so yes, it can. An unpaid final phone bill that ends up sent to collections behaves very much like a credit card debt on the file, even though it started as a small, easy-to-overlook balance. Utility bills and rent are handled differently and vary by provider and by province, so not every unpaid account behaves the same way. These small items are common precisely because they're the easiest ones to forget about after a move or a plan cancellation, and they're worth checking for before applying rather than after a lender flags one.
Your spouse has credit problems. Can you apply on your own?
Yes. When two people apply together, most lenders read the whole file off whichever credit score is lower, so one person's history affects the entire application, not just their share of it. Applying on your own removes that effect, but it means qualifying on one income instead of two, which changes what you can actually borrow. It's worth running both scenarios with real numbers before deciding which way to go, and there's genuinely no rush to decide this on the spot — it's a comparison worth taking the time to get right.
You would rather not go into detail about that period. Is that all right?
You can absolutely keep it short. Some of what happened will show up on the credit report regardless of how much you say about it, so there's no need to relive the whole story to move forward. What I actually need is the timeline, not the details behind it: roughly when it started, when it ended, and whether things have been steady since. That's enough to work with a lender's rules and figure out where you stand. The rest of the story is yours to keep, and it's not something that has to be explained to me or to anyone else in this process.
Ten minutes tells you where you land
No credit check in the first step, and nothing to prepare first.
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