Hi, I am planning to get a pre-approval for my home loan and my current credit score is 725. I just bought a car 3 weeks ago and financed it. There were few auto loan inquiries by different banks on my credit before my auto loan could be finalized. My credit score before the auto loan was 731. I am wondering if doing inquiry for home loan will affect my FICO score adversely. From what I have read online, inquiries done within 45 days are treated as same but not sure if that is still the case if the reason for those inquiries is different. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Shopping the market for different things, such as an auto loan and then a home loan afterwards, will be counted as separate inquiries. So, yes, it will likely knock a few more points off your FICO scores.
Thanks for your response. Any idea how many points that could be approximately? I read online that the FICO score about 10 % hit which is kind of consistent with my score after auto loan got finalized. What I am more worried about is my credit score taking a huge hit since there is not much time gap between my home loan pre-approval and auto loan.
I wouldn't be too worried about it...maybe 5 points max? It's still hard to say because there are so many other variables that affect your FICO scores at any given moment. The credit-scoring model isn't meant to deter you from shopping around for good rates on home or auto loans, so go ahead and do what you have to do.
