Real Estate: Cleaning Up Your Credit, Part II

As we talked about last week, homebuying is easier when you clean up your credit.

When meeting with a mortgage lender, they will generally check with three credit bureaus in order to view the history of your past payments. So if you only clean up one of the three bureaus, you’re not really doing much to help yourself. This blog post will be part 1 out of 2 posts on how to clean up your credit, so pay close attention!

The first thing you need to do is get a copy of your credit report. This report will show all three of the major credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax, and Trans-Union. Mortgage lenders will typically request data from all three bureaus to get a good idea of your credit history. So if they’re going to be looking at it, you’ll want to get a copy of your credit report as well, to know what you’re dealing with. Make it easier for yourself by ordering a Merged Report – they usually only costs around $30 and will be delivered to you in hard-copy through the mail – just Google “Merged Report” and you should be able to find somewhere to order it from.

What to do once you contact your creditors:
The main thing you need to do is call any creditors that report a negative item and ask them to remove it. Be very polite, ask in a pleasant voice, and don’t overreact or get upset when they say no. Just repeat the quest again continuously, while remaining polite and respectful. If they continue to deny your request, just ask to speak to the supervisor. Keep a record of your conversation with the time, date, who you spoke to and what they told you. Most of the time, you will be able to get the negative item removed.