This is worth a try
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I really apprictae your support mate, thank you!
This is so important!
I went to Lloyds first, my bank who I’d been with for 25 years. They’d lend about enough to buy a small box to live under a bridge. Then tried Countrywide, not much more helpful.
Got a bit disheartened with it and expected to be living at home forever. My estate agent suggested an independant guy she knew, figured she was doing it for the kick-back but he was brilliant. Definitely worth exploring it.
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As above, always use a mortgage broker for your mortgage. Find a good broker and speak to them about your position.
Staff at individual banks are generally ill informed and only have a limited set of products to sell you, and often a broker will get you better deals even at the same bank!
If it helps, my mortgage is with Barclays; Monzo was my main account when I applied for it, and it was secured through a broker.
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Like 
are scared of 
?
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Their own words, as it happens 
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A broker will also advise if it’s worth getting a mortgage with a huge arrangement fee, because they’ll easily be able to tell you if that’s ultimately offset by a different interest rate. These calculations are often confusing! Mine even advised me to add my fee to the mortgage and then overpay it off immediately, rather than just paying the fee upfront, as that was the best deal for me. Can’t recommend a good broker enough. Find one, and you’ll use them for life!
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I have a Barclays account and, like you, use Monzo for all of my spending (i.e. Barclays don’t see all of my outgoings).
I’ve just gone through the house-buying / mortgage process (mortgage offer received in February) and my mortgage is with Barclays.
I originally spoke with a mortgage advisor directly with Barclays early last year (as I was just kicking off thinking about buying somewhere) and they had no issues - I was able to articulate how I managed my finances, they had evidence of my salary, so all good.
Ultimately I went through a broker, Habito, to get access to all of the market and, after multiple twists and turns through many different banks (different rates, suitability, special offers, turnaround time, etc.), ended up back with Barclays.
You shouldn’t have any issue with obtaining a mortgage using Monzo (notwithstanding any other limiting factors) - just be prepared to articulate how your finances work. I pulled together a table / diagram to show how my salary flows into Barclays, transferred to Monzo for spends, and leaves a residual which goes into savings (useful for any source of funds questions too).
Given the banks make a significant amount of interest by selling a mortgage, I’m sure they’ll want your business no matter who you bank with!
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Might have been before Monzo lost its way and was floundering about a couple of years ago.
I’d say Barclays is probably more afraid of Wise and Revolut these days, with the news today. Monzo doesn’t even figure, and is a trend follower much more than a trendsetter.
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Yeah, it was definitely something I heard at the peak of growth. I think Monzo can get back to that place, though.
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Let’s hope so.
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All these are very valuable tips guys, thank you all a million really 
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As some others have said.
I’m not sure what “they can’t see my spending” means since - Credit bureau’s don’t hold any spending data on any customers from any lender. They’ll hold:
- Your credit data - This is the data you can see on Credit Karma, Clearscore, ect. It’ll be a list of all your accounts, when they were opened, any credit limits and any debt you have on those accounts.
- Your current account turnover data - This is an aggregated view of sum of inbound transactions into your current account each month for the last 12 months. For example if made two inbound transactions into your Monzo account in Jun 2021, one for £100 and a 2nd for £200, then we’d report £300 with no additional breakdown.
- Information on when other lenders have performed a live “hard” search on your credit file (note there are also “soft” searches, which is what we performed in your case which don’t show on your credit file).
If Barclays are asking for you to use Barclays to get a loan then this may be an internal policy that they only lend to people who use their current account 
So you’ll have this problem if you use any other bank than Barclays (or you could get a loan from elsewhere).
Re.
Today I got an overdraft offer on my Monzo app and I clicked to see what it is and then it said they cannot offer me overdraft because of my credit history.
I’m really sorry about this - We do as much as possible to prevent this. We don’t hold all the information about you until you “apply” for an overdraft and so we can’t only send messages to people who are 100% eligible. We do our best to only send messages where we have a high confidence that you’ll be eligible, but this still isn’t 100%.
Part of the reason for this is that we have to assess your affordability at the point you apply because we want to make as up to date of a decision about this as possible. My suspicion is that this is why you’ll not have been accepted - if you DM me your email i’ll happily take a look for you.
The fact you applied and didn’t get accepted for an overdraft will have zero impact on your credit file. We’ll have only done a “soft” credit search which other lenders can’t see.
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Basically that bank are talking 
That’s what bank statements are for, they’ll provide all the evidence a mortgage company / broker etc etc
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Who would’ve thought banks lie for profit, eh?!
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I had a similar conversation when I spoke to Lloyd’s about a mortgage and they advised something similar. My situation was different as i was transferring money to a separate account for a deposit which was with them and they said it would be better to have it with an account with them so they could see the amount of savings. Nothing was said about spending.
Other difference for me was that I’m staff with Lloyd’s so wanted to use them for the preferential rate we get on mortgages so started using Lloyd’s more.
Do you know what the industry/Barclays view of Starling was? “One of us” (because Anne), too small to be a threat or an expectation that they’d get bought out? Or something else?!
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I’m looking to buy my first place within the next year being full monzo.
My dad already said use a broker as they would find me the best deal for my circumstances and no snobbery over me banking with monzo.
Monzo going into the mortgage broker market sounds like a smart revenue spinner for me.
Does Barclays employ duff people to say that 
, or you spoke to a very new employee who just reflected a scripted text 
No bank can force me to use their services, not mislead in any other way 
It’s a little hard to say, the reality is it’s been 18+ months since I would hear things from the industry and a lot has changed in that time. At that time, Starling and Monzo really occupied the same space in the market, but they had far less users, brand recognition and buzz, so they weren’t considered a threat to incumbents in the same way that Monzo were.
Nowadays, of course the market is different. Starling seem to have done an admirable job (depending who you talk to) at navigating and supporting their customers through the pandemic, they’ve maintained consistent advertising over the last year, and perhaps are taken more seriously than they were. But I don’t think incumbents are necessarily scared of them, because their playbook is fairly straightforward and it’s somewhat easy to see where they are headed.
In retrospect I think what worried incumbents about Monzo was that we did not operate like any other bank in terms of how we thought about product, acquisition, growth, feature set. They could not predict our next moves, the company was not being run by bankers, our hype levels, referral mechanics and street awareness were like nothing the industry had seen. There’s a board member who also advised AMEX who told an anecdote about guest lecturing at a university, asking the students about Monzo and every single student (or seemingly) pulling out a hot coral card. He remarked that in over three decades of working in banking he’d never seen brand strength that compared. Tom being on the cover of WIRED, having people like Kevin Systrom and Tom Odell making personal investments… These things just weren’t the norm in this business. I remember in the prepaid days, having a meeting with an A&R of a major music management company begging for cards for all their A list clients.
But one might argue that that approach is also what put us on the backfoot when COVID hit compared to others. All of a sudden nobody was out flashing coral cards, and because we were a little later doing business accounts, we weren’t in the position to help now-struggling businesses in the way others were. And the factors that led to a large funding round being close to closing were impacted and as you all know, that funding got pulled out, leading the business to have to make incredibly tough decisions.
And while the pandemic ain’t over, it’s dramatically changed the market, and the ramifications plus the time that’s passed mean Monzo is now a different beast. It thinks differently, operates differently, and whilst overall that’s a net positive and the company is arguably more stable because of it, that lightning in a bottle of 2017-2019 or so will be hard to recapture. You have to be full of mavericks comfortable with playing Silicon Valley strategies to do that, but that’s not what the company is anymore. Most of the people who work that way have left, hence why the “Monzo Mafia” is now a thing.
Time will tell what happens, and I do think Monzo will be able to get some momentum back, but it won’t be using the same methods as before.
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