Hey all! Just wanted to give a big THANKS!!! to all of the helpful people here on the board! I just got a call from my broker - APPROVED!!! Locked at 5.875 / 0 points / $2350 closing costs for a 30 year fixed. Big improvement from 9.375!!! Anyway, what a rollercoaster it's been! Started out around March (7 months ago) with mid scores around 570 or so... dug into all of the great information on this board. Mostly, I disputed (not mine, never late, not late x, y, z, wrong balance, etc) over and over. Removed old addresses, disputed inquiries, etc. We also used the AU trick to get good lines on both of our reports, and limit bad lines to one or the other. ...today, my mid score is 679! The last few weeks have been NUTS! I tried to refi two months ago - everything was OK, but I had 8 lates showing on my mortgage (most recently around 10 month ago). Anyway, I had disputed them off of all except Equifax who kept verifying. The broker told me when the get the trimerge, they can't tell if a late is coming from all three, or only one report. Anyway, couldn't do conforming with the mortgage lates there. By some stroke of luck, around 2 weeks ago the Equifax lates disappeard with my last dispute! Buy another dispute of a single 60 day late in 1999 resulted in the late going away - but the account was updated to PAID COLLECTION! AND - we had a problem with the car payment for Aug... needed a new tranny, so we called Chrysler & asked what the absolute last day was that they would accept payment without posting a late for the month. Was told Sept.25, so we told her to set the autodraft for that date. Last week - BOOM - Chrysler 30 day late shows up on TU - TANKING my score. We called Chrys and the guy said, yep - our fault, we told you wrong. We needed to receive the funds by the 25th & the autopay takes 2 days to transfer. I'll put in a request to remove. Still there a week later, so I call to see when they're planning on removing it. Sorry - my supervisor denied the request. We're fighting with the super right now, but I figured we should get while the gettings good since it's only on TU and not the other two. I disputed all my bads on Equifax (since they score without disputed items), called the broker yesterday & got the word today that it went through their automated approval system with no problems!!! I am doing a happy dance!!! There are only a few things that can stop us now... 1. if they pull another report later and the Chrys lates are posted, thus tanking the scores. Broker says lenders reserve the right to pull their own score, but usually use the brokers pull 99.9% of the time. 2. if the appraisal doesn't come in high enough. When we built in 1999 it appraised for 205k when I didn'y have a driveway, deck, front porch steps, and gutters. I've added the concrete drive and deck since then, but have only gotten 1/2 way with the gutters & haven't started the porch steps. I'd like to think that it went up in the last 4 years, but I got a hinky feeling from the appraiser last time - she asked what I spent on it - told her $170 and curiously the appraisal came in at $205 - just around 80% LTV. Had me wondering if the lender kinda told her where they wanted it to be... Anyway - YEE HAW! You guys on the board ROCK. It's a lot of work and frustration, but everything you need is HERE on this BOARD. Search and read!!! You can achieve AMAZING results in a relatively short amount of time (considering how long it took for all the bad stuff to pile up)! I still have 7 tradelines with some sort of negative across the three reports, so I still have a lot of work to do. Looking for totally clean at some point in the future... What do they say, the last 5% of the work takes 95% of the effort??? Anyway - did I say THANKS?!?!?
NICE work! And you just saved about $150,000 in interest over the term.... THAT's why it is necessary to fix bad credit. Frankly, it is a BAD PERSONAL DECISION NOT TO FIX CREDIT - you save thousands of dollars - and GET $000s in super credit later. CREAT job! Dogman
Congratulations!! That's a big decrease. You can use that extra money to finish fixing the place up! Keep us posted on your progress on the remaining ones.
Hey all... just an update - WE CLOSED TONIGHT!!! Got a 5.875 30 year fixed for the 1st 154k with ABN Also got an 85k heloc at prime + 1.25 with 4k used. They don't pay off our old loan until Monday (recession period?), but I don't think there's anyway they could back out of it now that we've signed all of the papers & "closed". Is there??? Woo-hoo! Again, thanks to everyone who contributes here for all of the great advice!
