Declined In Four Minutes For Being Self Employed
Four minutes and eleven seconds to decide about a house
This is a composite of conversations we have most weeks, written up as one story. Details have been changed. It is a personal account, not mortgage or tax advice.
The short version, because you’re probably reading this in a van. I’m a self employed builder on Canvey Island. In 2023 a commercial customer went under owing me £14,000, and I paid my three lads and my merchant account before I paid a credit card and a personal loan I’d taken out to buy materials for that same job. Six months of nothing on those two accounts got me two defaults. Last month a national broker declined me over the phone in four minutes without ever asking to see a set of accounts, because their form wanted a salary and a sole trader hasn’t got one. I’ve got a deposit, a full order book into next spring, and I earn more now than I did before any of it happened.
I was in the van outside a job in Rayleigh when they told me no.
Hands-free, half nine in the morning, lad in the passenger seat pretending not to listen.
Four minutes. I looked at the call log afterwards because I couldn’t believe it.
Four minutes and eleven seconds to decide about a house.
The bloke on the phone sounded about twenty-two. Perfectly polite. Reading off a screen.
He asked me what my salary was.
I said I haven’t got a salary. I’ve got a business.
And that was it, really. Everything after that was him trying to find a box to put me in and not finding one.
The job that cost me £14,000
Here’s what happened, and I’d like somebody to tell me which bit I got wrong.
- Decent sized job, commercial, client I’d worked for twice before. Got about two thirds of the way through and they went under. Fourteen grand owed to me and no chance of seeing it.
I had three lads on that job and a merchant account that needed settling.
So I paid them.
All of them, in full, that month, because they’ve got kids and rent and they turned up and did the work.
What I didn’t pay was a credit card and a personal loan I’d taken out to buy materials for that same job.
Two accounts. Six months of nothing.
Two defaults.
Why I’d make the same call again
I cleared both of them in 2024 when the work came back. Paid every penny of it.
If you put me back in that month I’d do exactly the same thing in exactly the same order.
You don’t tell a man with two kids that his wages are late because a client you chose to work for turned out to be a bad one. That’s my problem, not his.
So I took it on the chin, and the chin turned out to be my credit file.
We’re not trying to buy anything clever
We’re renting on Canvey. Two kids, both settled at school. We want to buy in Hadleigh so nothing has to change for them.
That’s it. That’s the whole ambition. Same postcode, one bedroom more, and a garden that isn’t shared.
I’ve got the deposit. I’ve got work booked into next spring. Nineteen years self employed and I’ve never had a week off with nothing to do.
The advert said whole of market
Access to every lender. Specialists in complex cases.
Four minutes.
Never asked to see a set of accounts. Never asked what the business turns over, or what it clears, or what happened in 2023. Never asked for a single document.
Asked me for a salary twice, in slightly different words, like I’d misunderstood the question the first time.
They didn’t turn me down, a form turned me down
That’s the part that actually wound me up, and it took me a couple of days to work out why.
It wasn’t that they said no.
It’s that they said no without looking.
I’ve got two years of accounts and tax calculations sat in a folder in the office. There’s a full explanation of 2023 in there for anybody who wants it. Invoices, the lot.
Nobody wanted it. The form wanted a number in a box marked salary, and because I couldn’t give them one, the conversation was over before my accounts were ever relevant.
I said to my wife that night: they didn’t turn me down, a form turned me down.
And she asked me a reasonable question.
She said, right, so what actually is a default?
And I couldn’t answer her
Nineteen years self employed. Three defaults’ worth of grown-up decisions behind me, two of them my own.
And I’ve been carrying that word around for three years without ever once finding out what it properly means, how long it lasts, or whether paying it off did anything at all.
I didn’t know.
I knew what it felt like. I didn’t know what it was.
So I gave up the Sunday to it.