Okay, so I am applying for a mortgage -- FHA. Actually, most of the paperwork is through and things are looking possitive. My mortage processor called me and asked me to write a letter explaining the inquiries on my credit reports. What type of letter should I write? Concise? exhaustive? Does a mortgage company see all my inquires, or just "hards"? If they see all of them, there are going to be a bunch of WK, CSC, EQ dispute inquires, etc. Need to write the letter tonight, so chime in if you can help Stymied
i have no idea, i would say' just the facts ma'am'. we had to explain why we filed bk before we got our mortgage, i didn't turn it into a soap opera, just stated what the main reasons were for our filing. maybe you should call your realtor or mort. agent back and get their f/b?
They're only supposed to see the hard inquiries. That's all I'd worry about, and explain as simply as you can. For example, tried to get new cards to transfer balance and lower rate, so we could pay off debt faster, or shopping for car and tried to get best rate, etc.
I've got very few inquiries for new credit. Many of them are from back stabbing, low life CA's from accounts long discharged in BK.
It's okay to ask the processor what inquiries need to be explained. What they are looking for is if any of these could change your debt to income ratio. Revolving debt wont hurt you, but if you're taking on a new installment loan, that's another monthly payment that needs to be factored in. As for what you actually say, you don't need to go into great detail. Just tell the truth, but you can be brief. If the truth is you don't know why a creditor made an inquiry, you can say that too. Also, underwriters love it when these letters are written by hand. That way they know your loan officer didn't write it for you.
As a mortgage broker, we pull credit as a "tri-merge", or all three services. The only inquiries we see are the hard ones. Hope this helps.
