DID YOU KNOW? CREDIT SCORE REPAIR SERIES!!!
One of the biggest and most misunderstood factors in qualifying for a new home purchase is your credit score. As a loan officer, it is so exciting to be able to help families purchase the home they want…often when they didn’t really think they would be able to! On the flip side, it is so sad when the home buyers shoot themselves in the foot by doing something during the loan process that hurts their score and keeps them from being able to buy a home.
Just this week I had a customer who had a credit score good enough to do an FHA loan. They put an offer on a house, but they got over bid by another offer. Obviously feeling dejected, they went out and opened up a Best Buy charge acct with 400.00 limit and purchased a new TV for 385.00. Doesn’t sound that harmful, but it was. That transaction lowered their score by 47 points, dropping it under the credit score limit needed in order to be approved for a home loan. When they found another house, they did not qualify.
However…there is hope! We can help you fix some of the problems and mistakes you made and we can show you what you need to do to get going on the credit repair road! Sometimes we can get scores reversed in a week and we will even cover the cost! If your credit has more extensive damage, we refer you to a credit repair specialist who will work with you for 6 months to a year to get the score repaired.
As for the couple mentioned above…they paid the card off and provided me a receipt showing a zero balance. The file was sent to our credit tri-merge agency that validated the zero balance, reported it directly to the 3 bureaus that in turn provided a rapid rescore to reflect the zero balance. The fee to do this rapid rescore is paid by the lender. The result, credit score was improved enough to get the borrower qualified! The score didn’t go back to where it was because there is a credit score hit for opening a new revolving account which we cannot undo, but it was close…close enough!
Over the next several weeks we bring a series of articles with expertise that will help you understand what your credit score is and what makes it go up and down. Some things are very obvious and some things you would have never thought would affect your credit. We will discuss (not necessarily in this order):
1) What credit bureaus are and where they came from.
2) How different actions affect your scores including bankruptcy, credit inquiries, collections, paid collections, opening new accounts, paying off accounts, and the balances you maintain.
3) How to remove erroneous information and stay on top of your credit score.
4) How many scores you have and why you pull one score and the mortgage lender pulls a different score.
5) The truths and myths about credit score reporting.
In the meantime, don’t be afraid to call and let me take a look at what you have. You may think your credit score is worse than it is and we may be able to help you repair it quickly! This process could even be done while you’re building the home of your dreams! You won’t know until you try! Wouldn’t it be worth it if we could help you get into position to be able to buy a Sooner Traditions dream home for your family? Give us a call if you’re curious! Till next week…