New Year's Resolution! Review Credit Scores, Repair Where Needed, Purchase Dream Home

It’s a New Year and time to check your credit history scores and buy your dream home. It is estimated that up to 70% of credit reports have errors.

Tips for Credit Review and Repair

1. Even the task of reviewing your credit scores can be confusing. Many of the online resources for credit score review use an in-house software program (Vantage Scores) which return credit scores that can be as much as 20 points different than those pulled by mortgage lenders. Mortgage lenders typically pull your FICO (Fair Isaac Company) credit scores. So when pulling your own scores try to verify that they are FICO scores or contact a mortgage company to pull them for you to generate a mortgage pre-approval.

Fico Scores range from 350 to 850. Vantage Scores range from 501 to 990.

2. If you are in the midst of repairing your credit, always be sure to pay those creditors reporting to the credit bureaus in a timely manner. If you absolutely have to miss a payment, make sure it is with a creditor that does not report to the bureau, i.e. utility bill, insurance bill, etc. This is a last resort only. Remember, that if a payment is reported late, it will have a greater negative effect on your scores if it is recent. The older a reported delinquency is on your report the smaller will be its impact on your scores.

3. Find negative errors on your report and have them corrected. Common errors on your report are account date of last activity, credit limits shown are not accurate, account reflects closed by creditor when in fact it was closed by consumer.

4. Learn your credit rights under the Fair Debt Collections and Practices Act, FDCPA.

5. Keep balances below 30% of your credit limit. Your credit utilization can be too high and this will lower your scores. So pay down account balances, ask for a credit balance increase, or transfer balances to another card with a higher credit limit.

6. Document everything you do in the credit repair process. Keeps copies of all correspondence and important date records.

If you feel overwhelmed by the process, you might want to use a professional service for Credit Repair .

Remember The value of credit repair is significant. Low credit scores affect your ability to obtain a home loan, the interest rate you receive on your home loan, the cost of PMI, size of your down payment and, in some cases, the cost of your home owners insurance. Credit repair means money saved.

Contact John Shellington at John Henry Properties

Direct 713-248-2498

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