Your credit score is based on your credit report, which lenders check with your consent whenever you apply for credit. It shows the credit you've applied for, the loans and cards you currently hold, and your repayment history. Missed repayments and defaults lower your score, and lenders tend to treat scores in black-and-white terms, so a low score can stop an approval regardless of the story behind it. You can get your credit report free every three months from each of Australia's credit reporting bureaus (Equifax, Experian and illion).

In this video, McKern mortgage broker Mark Jones explains what affects your score and how to improve it: bring any loans in arrears up to date, pay out or consolidate debts where you can, and give the report time to recover. He also covers how long negative information stays on your file, why brokers run a credit check up front (undisclosed debts can sink an application), and how a partner's debts are counted in a joint application but not an individual one.

In this video

0:00 What affects your credit score?

0:55 How to improve a poor score

2:49 How far back lenders look

3:08 How to get your credit report

4:23 Joint applications

General information only, not personal advice.