My husband and I decided to clean his credit up so that we can buy a house in the near future. We pulled his credit report and almost everything is SOL but we decided it was in our best interest to pay these debts off because its his debt and also because its only going to keep hurting his credit scores until they are resolved. We typed up a Validation letter for 4 of the accounts, sent them certified mail and are now waiting to hear from them. Hopefully it turns out well. Three accounts reported showed up not paid when we paid them off last year. We contacted the agency to verify and they were paid just not reported correctly so they sent us the proof that its paid. Whats the next step in correct this on his credit report? Do we send a dispute letter with the document stating they are paid? any help greatly appreciated.
I think it's great that you're trying to take care of old debts, but it's important to remember that paying them off won't necessarily improve your husband's credit score in the short run so you can qualify to buy a home. A "paid" collection or charge-off is still a negative mark, just like an "unpaid" collection, so don't expect his scores to go up right away. That said, if the CRAs are still reporting the debts as unpaid, they need to be updated. Send a dispute letter, provide the documentation that you have, and they should get it updated for you. And a "paid" collection certainly does look better to a lender than an "unpaid" collection.
True it would be nice if it did improve it right away. We figure it does look better as paid rather than not. So we will just work our way through paying them off. Thank you for your information and I'm sure I will have more questions when and if we get anything back from the debt validations.
