I just paid for a copy of my credit report from all three major bureaus yesterday. If I apply for a loan, can a mortgage company use that instead of making an inquiry and running the risk of lowering my credit?

No

Katt next time email me Ill give you a free report or contact me and I give you a Mortgage Report which is 10x better than your myfico.com report.

Katt you can go to annualcreditreport.com and get one free report a year.Pulling your report from the credit bearues yourself does not hurt your score,they want your money(fees) and if they damaged peoples report every time they pulled it knowone would sign up for there month to month credit monitoring.

What would hurt your score is having more than 7 hard inquiries a year,a hard inquiry is you filling out a cc form,or car loan,etc.A soft inquiry is where a company looks at your credit to extend you an unsolicited offer,these do not affect your score.

When shopping for mortgages they will generally lump all inquiries and count them as one within a 2 week period,so no worries there.even if you go over on inquiries this makes up a real small part of your score.The biggest ones are 1.debt ration on limits under 50 percent 2.Active length of credit history open in good standing
3.mix of trade lines and late payment and public record collections.

Lenders will take your middle score if it's above 700 you can pretty much get anything you want although there are a few programs where you have to be at 720 or above.

The online reports have nothing to do with your tri-merge report because it uses about 100 factors that make up your score for lending.

good luck

Fico scores are now one hard hit in 45 days for home loans or auto loans. Just changed Jan 1 2006.

Super realtor - Not true. I had a borrower with marginal credit who had decided to rate shop. Needless to say his middle score went from 636 to 613 in 5 pulls. All within two weeks.

The 7 inquires comes direct from the creditors scoring model so i know it is true,i don't know about your clients specific credit report or what's going on with it,they could have gotten it pulled before,or had too many recent inquiries to there credit report.There is alot of reasons it could have dropped some and not just the inquiries.

Wow! Maybe you should explain this to the CRA's. They DO NOT obide by what you stste. In 1985 a bill was sent through legislation for this exact reason. 21 years later, nothing has changed. It's obvious you are not in the mortgage business.

Thank all of you very much for taking time to respond to my question. Super Realtor...I did get the free credit report on annualcreditreport.com back in June but at the time, I didn't have a credit card and didn't have the means to pay for my credit scores. Now, I still don't have a credit card but I DO have a Mastercard debit card and that has been a huge help. My scores were 599, 618 and 631 which is MUCH higher than I was expecting considering that I have spent the last two years trying to recover from 23 years with a financial moron. Now...all of my bad credit is over two years old but the problem is that I have NO credit because I'm afraid to apply for credit and lower my score further. It seems that I am living in that lovely "damned if I do and damned if I don't" stage of life.

Anyway...thanks to all of you...

Don't sweat it,618 is your middle and you can get 100 financing down to 580 full doc,at 600 you can do 100 stated.

Credit inquiries make up a small part of your score.

The scoring model has about 100 factors in it to make up the score,they will never tell anyone completely what these formulas are as people would devise ways to beat the scoring system and then defeat the purpose of a risk driven scoring model in the first place.

We were never really suppose to know our credit scores anyway until the outrage came about.

mortgage brokers and agents want to cherry pick and go after people with really high scores,the people with blemishes agents and mortgage people are all nice to them until something better comes along and puts them at the bottom of the stack,i treat every client the same.


I won't play symantics but i work with credit issues all of the time.

Katt,
SuperR is giving great advice. I would just have to add that you took a chance and leaving the credit leach why dont you take a chance on building your credit. Orchard Bank offers and great start up creditcard. Problems with not having tradelines(credit cards) is that you will get a bad interest rate as if you had 5 open all maxed out. You need to reestablish yourself with the Credit Card Companys. SuperR is correct if that 618 can stick once you get a pull from a mortgage credit pull you are in the arena to purchase a home if your income and debt can allow it.
Easy math:
Take all the minimum monthly payments from your CC's, auto, student loans and add them up. Divide that by your Gross Monthly Income (its that number on your paycheck you wish you had).

35%-40% is what most banks want. Although some banks will go to 55%. Yet dont forget that we need to add in the future mortgage payment. That is when you get pre-qualified and a interest rate is determined. Hope this helps.

Everyone is giving me some great advice and I appreciate so much that y'all are taking the time to help.

I have deliberately delayed buying a car just to make sure that my debt/income ratio stays favorable and that's been no easy feat as I'm driving an 88 Mercedes. I have no bills other than living expenses like rent, utilities, gas and groceries.

Don't most secured credit cards show up as exactly that on your credit report? And if they do, does that still help your credit if your payment history is impeccable?

Secured cards will show up as a revolving tradeline on your credit and will not show 'Secured Status'... it will have a good impact on your score after six months of consitant payment... do not max out the line unless you pay it off monthly, I would do a tank of gas (although with prices now days, you might max out a secured card with one fill up) and then pay it off, six months later, it should be a good addition!

Matt, what is the actual trigger for "balances too high in proportion to credit limits" 30%? Do you know for a fact?

I second the notion that Orchard Bank has the absolute best secured credit card on the planet. $200.00 minimum deposit and 7% APR. I also have been told that after 6 months they usually offer you another account to help you build more credit.

No one is really qualified to tell us the actual credit bureau algorithms. If that kind of information was public and known as fact people could surely find ways to manipulate their report. So, what you normally hear is a bunch of trial and error tips.