Credit Information

Your credit is critical. It will determine both your approval, and now also your rate and your mortgage insurance premium. Credit scores below 580 and in some cases 600 are becoming increasingly difficult to get approved for a mortgage loan or a home purchase.

There are three primary credit repositories - Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. These collect and compile your credit, public information, loan inquiries, address and employment histories from the various reporting companies and institutions that you do business with and that subscribe to the bureaus.

These repositories evaluate that information against a scoring model. This is how each credit bureau scores your credit file

Your credit report gives a picture of you current and your historical credit rating, based on the information received from the various businesses who report. The credit report is gives information on your identifying specifics (name, SSN, etc.), on your address and employment history, on your active credit accounts, on your inactive and charged off credit accounts, on your credit inquiries, and on your public records. 

The single most important thing you as a consumer can do is to monitor your credit bureau. Take advantage of the free credit report that you can pull annually, one from each of the three repositories. These free reports are available from www.annualcreditreport.com.

Make certain that you keep records of your user information and the credit report reference number. When you pull a free report, you have 90 days that the file is active and can be used to dispute inaccuracies.

I recommend that you request the individual credit reports at different times. The information may not be exactly the same on each report, but by splitting the free reports you have the chance to see your credit at three different times each year.

Pull one on your birthday month, then follow with another bureau every three months. Or better yet, start with one of the reports today.

It is not so much identity theft that you are monitoring, although that is important. You are monitoring for mistakes that are detrimental.

Another issue is what and how to dispute errors. That is where a credit professional helps. there are several credit repair companies. Each of the credit repositories offer credit monitoring. In conjunction with a mortgage application, I have the expertise to guide your efforts in correcting credit errors, or equally importantly in building a credit file.

The wrong action can actually lower your credit score.

This section has articles on Getting Your Credit Report, What is a credit score, Your FICO score, Improve Your Credit Score, mistakes on Your Report, Disputing Credit Reports, and Bankruptcy.

If you have questions, please complete the Question form below. You can also call, email, or start a chat with me.

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