First Post - Help me buy a house! (Please Hello and thanks everyone for such a great forum...I've been reading and searching all day! I'm planning on buying a house this year and got to thinking that NOW is the time to get my credit ducks in a row. I have some questions unanswered from all my searching I was hoping to get help with. I pulled all three reports from myfico.com and here's my current situation: Overall: NO derogatory entries whatsoever. Just bought used BMW - $26K car loan with BMWNA @ 2.99% interest, just made 1st payment. ~$9400 in student loans just consolidated. 2 Credit cards I never use with $0 balance and combined $16K limit. 1 Amex Gold I use for everything and pay off every month. Equifax-775 Experian-766 Transunion-778 Here's some questions I have; if you guys could answer them I would really appreciate it! 1. I have read about fako vs. fico but can't find any real information on how they will differ. Is my REAL fico going to be higher or lower then what they told me on www.myfico.com? Is there any way I can find out for sure? 2. I just bought a used car and my Transunion report is showing 2 hits; one from the dealership and one from the financial company for the same transaction. Can I have one removed and is it worth the time it will take? 3. A couple of my older credit card accounts which are now closed with a $0 balance and no derogitory information nonetheless show that I went over the limit. I seriously doubt this...but is it going to harm my score? 4. I have one incorrect address with Equifax. Will it hurt me? 5. How can I get my fico up to 800+ by the Fall. I'd like to have it as low as possible to get a good mortgage rate. I know this is a lot of questions and I sincerely appreciate any help! Eric
First Post - Help me buy a house! (Please Oops...forgot one CC. Make that 3 CC's with 21K combined limit and $0 balance.
First Post - Help me buy a house! (Please First of all you have excellent credit. Congratulations! MYFICO.COM is FICO scores. Don't worry about searching for FAKO. You've got the right scores. Not worth the time removing the inquiry. It won't affect your score since it's grouped together with the other inquiry same time frame on vehicle purchase. You are still welcome to dispute it as not mine. I can't answer the one on the old credit card over the limit tradelines. I would think you'd be better off leaving them on though. Positive tradelines are beneficial. As far as getting to 800+, I'm not 100% certain, but your scores may get you the best rate right now. You should consider looking for another forum where it's more specialized focus is mortgages. There's plenty of links on this site if you search. Point is, your scores are high enough to get very good rates and probably best rates right now. Good Luck! gilmores
First Post - Help me buy a house! (Please Wow Gilmores thanks for all the info...looks like I'm sitting pretty. FYI it wasen't always like this for me...had serious debt and a paid repo on my record that just came off a couple years ago. My "credit fixing" technique was to work my a$$ off and pay things...then WAIT. Took forever (OK, 7 years). Sure wish this resource had been around back then! Cheers, Eric
First Post - Help me buy a house! (Please Liminality, The credit cards you currently have but 0 balance; I'd use them to charge upto 10% of the limit on each card instead of paying cash on your regular expenses. FICO seems to hate 0 balance on cards; but rewards low balances. The steps seem to be 10%, 15%, 34% and 50% ... this is just an empirical observation. Use the cards, but pay them off monthly. If you have cash, pay a little more on your auto loan. Recent obligations are a score killer and you can negate that by paying down the balances a little. What gilmores said is true however; you are sitting pretty right now. The moves I suggested above will add only a little value, perhaps 10 to 15 points more than what you have. But I listed them anyway just in case you want to see an increase, however small ....
First Post - Help me buy a house! (Please excellent suggestions by lakpr too. It would certainly be exciting to have scores in the 800's. Best of luck getting there and good luck house searching! With the scores you have built, you will have lots of negotiating power. gilmores
