Improve Your Credit Score Before Buying A Home
By Roselind Hejl
Several months before you begin to look for a home, you should take steps to get "credit approved" for your loan. Start by making a list of all your existing and credit cards, with the company names, account numbers and monthly payment amounts. This will help you to analyze the information shown on your credit report. Include all closed and credit cards if these records are available. 1) Get a Financial Check-Up Make an appointment with a good mortgage lender, and request a full credit approval. As a part of the approval process, your credit report will be ordered. It will include data from the three main credit reporting agencies - Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union. The report will show three credit scores - one from each agency. The interest rate and type of loan available to you is related to your credit score.
The assistance of a mortgage professional to help you to understand your credit report and offer suggestions on how to improve your score is invaluable. For the average person, interpreting a credit report and dealing with errors is a daunting task. Credit reports are filled with frustrating jargon and codes. They are not written for the general public to read. Even more intimidating is the task of communicating with credit agencies to dispute or correct information. 2) Correct Mistakes Credit reporting agencies often have mistakes in their data. The information in your credit file is input by computers. A computer weighs your data using complicated mathematical formulas to arrive at a credit score. Nearly everyone has paid bills late for one reason or another. Perhaps a bill was sent to a wrong address, or you have had a dispute with a vendor. It is likely that you have some issues on your report that should be disputed or corrected. Each of the websites of the three main agencies has a dispute resolution page. Feel free to use it. 3) Deal With Real Credit Issues You may have had serious credit problems at some point in the past. Reviewing this may be emotionally draining, and will bring up the underlying situation that caused the credit problems. Get advice on how long the issues will remain on your report, and how to re- build your credit worthiness. Or, you may have a persistent habit of overspending. In this case, you should talk with a financial advisor or personal counselor to help you work out of debt, and establish better habits. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling offers low cost assistance for serious credit problems. If you place yourself under their supervision to handle your debts, you will not be able to obtain new credit during the work-out period - which may be years. Before doing that, ask a mortgage lender or financial advisor if there is a way to redeem your credit without their supervision. 4) Check Your Credit File A law, passed in 2005, requires the three main credit agencies to provide a free credit file disclosure each year. It has been suggested that you could order a file from the first agency in January, one from the second in May and one from the third in September. The central site where your file can be ordered is annual credit report dot com. The purpose of this law seems to be to help people find out if they are a victim of identity theft. This enables you to monitor your file for any new credit that did not come from you. If you take advantage of the free credit file reports, you should check them for mistakes. Use the credit report that you reviewed with your mortgage lender to compare with the data in your credit file. Keep in mind that the free credit file disclosure is not a credit report. It does not include a credit score. 5) Understand Credit Scores Less than 620 - Poor 620-680 - Average - You may need to put more cash down on your loan. 680-720 - Good 720 - 800 - Excellent 800-850 - Seldom seen 6) Play by the Rules The information in your credit file is scored by these factors: 35% - Payment history - Paying bills on time is very important. Today many people use auto draft or pre-written checks through online banking to pay bills. These help to prevent late payments. If you want a good credit score, do not pay late! 30% - The relationship between your available credit versus how much you have used is an important factor in your score. If you are over 50% drawn against your available credit, this will count against you. For this reason, it helps to keep old credit card accounts open, even though you do not use them. They build up the total amount of credit available to you, relative to what you have charged. 15% - The length of credit history on each loan has an effect on your score. A more seasoned loan is scored higher. For this reason it is not a good idea to open credit cards
From our Archives: Consolidation
For upcoming college graduates, the daunting task of paying off students loans is not far away. In a mere six months after graduation, paying off these loans will become a reality. That makes it the perfect time to begin to consider student loan consolidation. Here are some great articles from our archives with tips and tricks to guide you in the consolidation process.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/4Xf-lvJtujU" height="1" width="1"/>
Most popular student loans for college
Not everyone is aware of all the loan options available to pay for college. For an overview of federal and private sources of credit used to pay for college, view these links! Here are just a few options to consider...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/zk_zkVsb4KU" height="1" width="1"/>
How to Avoid Student Loan Defualt
Navigating student loan payments can seem daunting. Before you know it, you've graduated and need to start making payments. So what happens if you are unable to make your monthly payments? You can soon find yourself in default. Learn how to avoid this dilemma.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/O6Rdd4nk6zU" height="1" width="1"/>
What Will My Student Loan Consolidation Rate Be?
TweetDepending on the type of student loans you will be consolidating, the interest rate can vary greatly. For instance, federal student loan consolidation allows you to obtain a fixed interest rate based on the weighted averages of your existing loans. Private student loan consolidation is much harder to nail down. Federal Student Loan Consolidation Rates [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/mEG217t3Pv0" height="1" width="1"/>
It?s July 23rd, Do you know where your loans are?
Did you know that because nearly all private student loans have variable APRs, your interest rate could have changed several times in the past 2 years?<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/W35fIg6RTdE" height="1" width="1"/>
Confused about reform and consolidation?
TweetIf you’ve heard the word about the reform currently in progress across the country, you probably are aware of the end of the FFEL program and exclusive federal consolidation returning to the Department of Education. If not, read this page on upcoming changes to get acclimated. One question we get a lot is, “If FFEL [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/gtij4UUkuQQ" height="1" width="1"/>
New Grads, Start Thinking About Consolidation
Consolidation has two main benefits that can be of enormous financial help to you both in the present and the future: the improvement of your credit rating and lower net monthly payments.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/IRMnvwwn14w" height="1" width="1"/>
What NOT to do when Consolidating your Student Loans
There are a great many benefits to consolidating your student loans, such as the convenience of making one or two monthly payments as opposed to six or seven, the lower monthly payment. But there are some cases where you have to be careful.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/hVsxcx5MHFg" height="1" width="1"/>
Graduating? Consider student loan consolidation.
Depending on the amount (and type) of loans you took out for school and the repayment plan you selected, the monthly payments may still be out of your reach by the end of your grace period.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/TfWhN3LYYvM" height="1" width="1"/>
Should I Consolidate my Private Student Loans?
Federal student loan consolidation is fast, easy, free and highly recommended to lower your monthly payment. Private student loan consolidation is a bit trickier. Here are some notes to remember if you choose to go down this road.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StudentLoanConsolidationHotTopics/~4/pI-n1mZXjYQ" height="1" width="1"/>
offering low initial rates, then close them after a few months and open new credit cards. 10% - The number of inquiries made on your credit report affects your score. Each time you open a credit card or new loan, your credit information is pulled. Keep these to a minimum. A recent law has made it possible for people shopping for homes or autos to have multiple inquiries, from the same industry (mortgage or auto), done over a 30 day period without penalty. However, to be on the safe side, do not allow your credit report to be pulled unless absolutely necessary. 10% - The types of credit used may hurt your score. from finance companies, signature loans, furniture and some retail store are considered a poor judgment because of their high rates, and may count against you. 7) Improve Your Credit Score It is easy and necessary to borrow money. We customarily make everyday purchases using credit cards, and set up for homes, cars and other purchases. Your credit score is especially important in the purchase of your home. It will affect the type of loan available, down payment required, and interest rate charged. A low score can cost you thousands of dollars in additional interest over the years. Even insurance companies factor your credit score into their decisions. More than ever, you need a good credit score, or you will pay the price. Finance providers, rental agencies, car dealers, insurance companies and credit card companies are not going to help you improve your credit score. In fact, they have an economic interest in charging you a higher rate. It is up to you to be proactive about understanding and improving your own credit score. A good time to start is when you begin the mortgage approval process for a home purchase. It is a good habit to have. --------- Roselind Hejl is a Realtor with Coldwell Banker United in Austin, Texas. Her website - http://www.weloveaustin.com - offers homes for sale, market trends, buyer and seller guides. Let Roselind help you make your move to Austin, Texas. |
