We've all had tough times at one point or another. Most important of all, don't be afraid or embarrassed about trying to start again. Everyone deserves a second chance.

There is a big difference between a person who had a bad experience in his or her life and a person who is a bad credit risk.

The three main questions that every mortgage lender asks are:

• What happened? This means that he will be interested in knowing what caused you to have the bad credit experience.

• What did you do about it? The lender will look for efforts that you made to try and work things out.

• Why will it never happen again? The lender will need to see that you're back on your feet, and that you have learned from your bad experience and made the appropriate changes in your financial life to ensure that you don't face the same problems again.

You can qualify even if you had credit problems in the past.