It is usually a short letter, or a shorter email. After months of gathering payslips, job letters, bank statements and a valuation report, after telling your mother and your pastor and your best friend that this might finally be the year, the answer comes back in two polite paragraphs. The lender is unable to approve your application at this time.
People describe the feeling in different ways. Embarrassed. Flattened. Angry at the bank, then at themselves. Some go quiet for days. Some start scrolling through rental listings they swore they were finished with. For many would-be homeowners, a declined mortgage is one of the most discouraging moments of adult life, precisely because so much hope was riding on it.
A psalm for the day the answer is no
Psalm 42 was written by someone who knew what it was to be far from where he wanted to be. He remembers leading crowds to the house of God, and now he is somewhere else, taunted by people asking, “Where is your God?” He does not pretend to be fine. “My tears have been my food day and night,” he says.
And then, twice in the psalm and again in the one that follows, he does something interesting. He talks to himself: “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God” (Psalm 42:11, NIV).
Notice that he does not scold himself for being downcast. He asks why. And he does not attach his hope to a particular outcome. He does not say, “Put your hope in God, for He will get me back to Jerusalem by next month.” He says “I will yet praise him.” Yet. There is a future in that word, even if he cannot see its shape.
A no is information, not a verdict
Discouragement tends to turn one event into a story about your whole life: “I will never own a home. I am not the kind of person who gets ahead.” But a declined application is usually far more specific than that. It generally means that, on that date, with that lender’s criteria, something in the file did not fit.
Once the first sting has passed, it is worth finding out what that something was. Many lenders will explain, at least in general terms, why an application was declined, if you ask politely. Common reasons include:
- income that is too low for the loan requested, or hard to verify, as often happens with self-employed or contract workers;
- existing debts, such as a car loan or credit card balances, taking up too much of your monthly income;
- problems on your credit history, including missed payments you may have forgotten about;
- a property that valued lower than the price, or has title or structural issues;
- too short a time in your current job;
- missing or inconsistent paperwork.
Some of these can be fixed in weeks. Others take a year or two. Very few are permanent.
What the week after can look like
Consider a woman in her late thirties, a teacher, declined for a loan on a modest townhouse. She gives herself the weekend to be sad. She cries in the car outside church, and a friend buys her lunch and lets her talk. On Monday she calls the lender and asks, calmly, for the reasons. It turns out to be two things: an old store account she thought was closed that shows as unpaid, and a loan amount slightly beyond what her salary supports.
Neither is a catastrophe. She settles the account and asks for written confirmation. She speaks to a mortgage adviser about what she might realistically borrow. She looks again at the townhouse and at smaller options, and at whether a joint application with her sister might be wise, and what the risks of that would be. She sets a date six months ahead to review where she stands. None of this is dramatic. But by the end of that week, she has moved from “I will never” to “not yet, and here is why”.
Things that help, and things that don’t
- Helpful: asking the lender for reasons; getting a copy of your credit report; talking to an independent mortgage adviser; checking whether another lender or a housing programme has different criteria; letting trusted people pray with you.
- Less helpful: applying to several lenders in a rush without fixing the underlying problem; borrowing from an informal lender at high cost to plug a gap; stretching the truth on the next application; deciding you have been cursed or forgotten.
Hope that is not tied to the house
There is a quieter lesson in Psalm 42 as well. The psalmist’s deepest longing is not really for a place, but for God: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you.” Owning a home is a good and worthy goal, and it is right to work towards it. But if our sense of God’s goodness rises and falls with the lender’s decision, we will be discouraged often, because life is full of letters that say no.
The deeper hope is that God is with you in the rented flat as surely as He will be in the house you may one day buy. That hope does not make the disappointment disappear. It gives it somewhere to rest while you take the next small, sensible step.
So if the letter came this week, let yourself feel it. Then ask why, honestly, the way the psalmist asked his own soul. And say, even if you have to say it through your teeth: I will yet praise Him.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
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