First off, thanks for reading this message. I'm about at my wits end and need some experience and perspective from those who have repaired their poor credit. First, the backstory: Graduated from college in 1997 and had student loans (Perkins, Stafford and a Federal Loan), along with car debt. Because of extremely poor decisions, I ended up delaying payment on one of the student loans (Perkins) and the car loan. I ended up having the last few payments of the car loan go to collections and get charged off as a bad debt in January 2001. I eventually paid off the entire remaining balance of the car loan, but the adverse item remains on 2 of 3 credit bureau reports to this day. The Perkins loan had 5 late payments on it, one of which was a 90 day delinquincy. The last delinquincy was reported in June of 2003 and the loan itself was paid in full in March 2005. I recently contacted the comptrollers office at my University to see if they could contact the credit reporting agencies and consider requesting that the delinquent status be removed from my credit report. They declined to do so. Since these issues occurred almost 5 years ago, I've never been late for a car payment, credit card payment or loan repayment. I've recently been exploring mortgages for my first home (after renting for many years) and have been told that these two items will potentially be problematic. The two primary questions I have for the forum would be the following: 1. Since the seven year period has passed regarding the time the auto loan bad debt showed up on my credit report, what would I need to do to get this removed? The remaining loan was paid in full and its now seven years and one month from the date in which it first showed up on my report. 2. Is there any way to have the five late Perkins loan payments removed from my credit report? The University has refused to help and I'd like to do whatever is necessary to have the late payments removed (if possible). I've been paying for bad decisions for several years now and was holding out hope that I wouldn't have to wait until 2010 or 2011 to finally have clean credit. Any assistance the forum could provide would be of great help to me. Thanks again, MM
First, your situation is not that bad, and you should be able to secure a mortgage. Next, you are doing the right things, so keep it up. For starters, I don't want to assume here, but if you haven't yet pulled all three of your credit reports, do so now. Also, get your FICO credit scores from www.myfico.com to see where you really stand. Review and compare all three reports and scores. The auto loan late should have fallen off your reports, if it has not, then "dispute" as "Past Statute of Limitation" for reporting, or "obsolete" (they mean the same). Make sure you dispute the "late" only, you would like to keep the tradeline/account on there to help your credit score. Next, dispute the student loan derogs as "inaccurate and incomplete". Wait to see the results, you may get lucky. After you do the above, check your credit scores again. Then start pre-shopping for a mortgage. You should be fine.
This is so old, it probably will not be problematic for a mortgage company, especially since you brought it current and paid in full. Those 5 year old lates are probably not even affecting your score tremendously. Dispute it as obsolete/illegally reaged. Do you know the date it is scheduled to fall off as per the reports? They probably have it dated to the repayment date (which is incorrect). [/QUOTE]
