CREDIT

I definately agree with Elena, make sure the company is reputable. I used one several years ago as well and they did a terrific job.

Anita sure knows here stuff! We are all so blessed to have access to her knowledge, no wonder she is a DG SUPERSTAR!!!

Thank you Anita, for sharing so much with us!

While looking for a lender to carry your loan, go to www.annualcreditreport.com and print out your free credit report from all three bureaus and take it with you when you go see lender. They can use that to get your pre-approval done with out having to hit your credit again to pull it.

While looking for a lender to carry your loan, go to www.annualcreditreport.com and print out your free credit report from all three bureaus and take it with you when you go see lender. They can use that to get your pre-approval done with out having to hit your credit again to pull it.

I know that when you are getting prequalified/approved for a mortgage you can do that through several places within a 2 week period or so and the credit burueas will only count it as one inquiry because they think that you are shopping around for the best rate.

I am curious, can you apply the same principal for getting approved for an auto loan while getting approved for a mortgage? I assume the auto loan gets looked at as a separate type of financing and therefore gets treated as a seperate inquiry. Anyone know?

Thank You Anita and all the other friends for the information. I seem to resemble the remarks made about every portion of credit repair. I believe you have awakened my top priority. I know i have a lot of work! Funny how things happen sometimes. I have talked to two people about property they need to sell,--Advise appreciated. G.C.John

Are they good deals? Will they consider owner financing? Give us the details so we can help you out!
Elena ;D

Does anyone have a really good credit report website they could recommend? I was thinking about, not only getting a copy of my credit report, but also having my credit monitored. I know there are sites like freecreditreport.com but I would really like to get a tried and true company that offers credit monitoring. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Roni

Roni,

Two things I would suggest. If you are simply looking to get your reports I would go to www.annualcreditreport.com. Anita listed this webiste above. It is a site that the gov't established with the three credit bureaus so that everyone can have free access to one report from each bureau annually. You can get all three at the same time or stagger them if you choose (can be a way to monitor - get one every 4 months).

Secondly, if you're looking to get your scores the best way to go (to my knowledge) is through www.myfico.com. They are an official webiste of the Fair Isaac corp., the company that comes up with the actual scores that 90+% of lenders use when making a lending decision. Your regular credit scores and your fico scores can actually be very different. They have 5 different products (one has a free 30 day trial) that may or may not offer monitoring depending on which you choose. Hope that helps.

Jeff

Yup...good site! I've posted this before a while ago. This is what I do. I run one every 4 months also. Example: do Expedian in Jan..or so. Then Equifax in spring/earliy summer, and Trans in late fall early winter.

Thanks Jeff and D. I was also thinking about credit monitoring, such as lifelock.com or freecreditreport.com. That way I would get alerts when a hit to my credit seems out of the norm. Does myfico offer something like that? I was on that site last night researching it, but I was practically cross-eyed from being so tired.

Thanks again, Roni

When you get on to myfico click on "Products" and they list a side by side comparison of their products. I think there's 2-3 of them that offer monitoring and/or alerts. Check it out.

try www.truecredit.com it will give all 3 reports and scores

I just logged on and read the FICO score is better than regular score....whats the diff between FICO score and generic credit score?

signed up for lifelock.com? It is very intriguing....

Mortgage brokers and lenders say it happens all the time: A mortgage applicant says, "Oh, I've already checked my credit score online." Then the loan officer pulls the home buyer's FICO score and finds that it's 50 or 100 points lower than the generic credit score the applicant quoted.

"This is becoming a real problem -- a lot of people simply don't know the difference between FICO scores and other scores," says Ginny Ferguson, immediate past chairperson of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers' credit-scoring committee and co-owner of Heritage Valley Mortgage Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif. "They think it's all the same."

FICO scores, developed by Fair Isaac Corp., are the predominant credit measure used by the mortgage industry. The scores run from 300 to 850 and are used to predict a borrower's likelihood of future nonpayment, with higher scores indicative of better creditworthiness.

Other commercial scoring models, which may also accurately predict risk of nonpayment and gauge a consumer's credit health and behavior, are widely available on the Internet. But they are rarely used by mortgage lenders and therefore have limited relevance for a home mortgage application. Lenders use FICO scores to price mortgages. Lower FICO scores can cost applicants hundreds of dollars a month in higher interest payments and thousands of dollars over the term of the loan.

When FICO scores are substantially lower than non-FICO scores, "the consumer assumes the broker did something to make their scores worse" -- perhaps seeking to charge them higher rates or fees, Ferguson said. "And of course, that is not the case."

Independent credit-reporting agencies that supply FICO scores to mortgage lenders also are feeling the heat.

"Our members get blamed by their own customers, who are primarily brokers and lenders," says Terry Clemans, executive director of the National Credit Reporting Association, a trade group that represents hundreds of credit agencies providing consumer reports and scores to mortgage lenders.

"We're getting a lot of angry conversations about 'why is your score lower' than what the consumer got somewhere else" online, Clemans said. But credit-reporting agencies are simply middlemen -- purchasing reports and FICO scores from the three national credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion -- and repackaging them for mortgage lenders.

Ferguson, who lectures nationwide to loan officers on credit scoring, says she's seen only one instance when a mortgage applicant's FICO score was higher than an Internet pop-up site's score, "and that was just by two points." Typically, she says, a FICO score comes in anywhere from 35 points to 100 points below a generic score purchased off an Internet site -- and that's where the trouble starts because "we just don't use those other scores."

Fair Isaac itself has become concerned about marketplace confusion over its proprietary scores and a multitude of other scores. Tom Quinn, vice president of global scoring for Fair Isaac, says the company's research has documented disparities of anywhere from five points to more than 200 points between FICO scores and non-FICO scores on the same consumer. The disparities exist because the statistical scoring models often assign different weights to the same information and generate what may be strikingly different numerical conclusions.

Some of the most active Internet-driven score purveyors are associated with national credit bureaus. But they don't go out of their way to tell consumers that the credit score they are buying is an in-house generic score, not a FICO, and therefore it will have little relevance in a home mortgage transaction.

For example, TrueCredit.com is owned by TransUnion. The Web site trumpets the importance of credit scores as financial-management tools but only reveals in tiny block print at the end of its "credit score sample report" page that "the credit score provided here is not a so-called FICO score."

Steven Katz, a spokesman for TransUnion, said his company's TrueCredit score "is really intended to help consumers understand the importance of taking control" of their own credit management.

It is, in other words, primarily an educational tool, not what will actually be used to qualify you or price your mortgage. Nonetheless, prominent on the TrueCredit.com site is the statement that the TransUnion score is "how you may be viewed from a lender's perspective."

Except, of course, if that lender happens to be taking your application for a mortgage and only pulling your FICOs.

id the site where this artical came from say how the fico scorce and the standard scores differed in calculation? ....why the hell wouldnt they all use the same calculation????? stupid!

I just learned, and I thought I would pass it on, that under state law consummers in Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachuetts, New Jersey, and Vermont have free access to their credit reports. Go to the Fed Trade commish site at www.ftc.gov

Anita sent me to this one and I see she listed it again here, as well.
For $14.95 a month you have unlimited access to your credit report and scores from all 3 bureaus, plus they send you an alert in your e-mail when there is any change detected by any of the bureaus. It is especially helpful when there is a lot of activity on your credit, or when you are working on building it. You can keep a close eye on it every day.

Rina

ok..thx for the info. Just know that they provide a standard score.

You're talking about the above conversation about standard and FICO, right?
Is the www.ftc.gov you posted for FICO? Were the states you listed the only ones that have that, or was that just a partial list you had?

Thanks,

Rina

yes (conversation about standard and FICO)

That was the entire list that was given. I just logged on (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/credit/reports.shtm) there and unless there is another link somewhere on their page, it looks like they just say to go to annualcreditreport.com. ....ummmmmm

Thanks D.

Hey D, I signed up for lifelock.com but I am thinking about canceling. I read all the information and it sounded good so I signed up. When I called them to request that they not order my credit report for me because I wanted to get it instantly rather than a couple of months from the time I signed up. I then asked them about the credit monitoring they offered and they said they don't monitor my credit. I was under the impression that they did and alerted me when my credit was being used. Well, I guess they don't so I'm going to cancel and try truecredit or one of the other suggested sites.

Hope this helps,

Roni

I was turned off by lifelock when I found out that the guy who owns it (you know the one that puts his ssn out there) well he used his own product and his ID was STOLEN,. As a matter of fact the last time was last month and someone used it to buy a motor home or something. It was all over the news.

And if that was inappropriate to post please feel free to flag and remove

You just made up my mind about Lifelock. I only wish I had know this two days ago before I signed up for their free trial =(=-(

Hey, can someone fill me in on how to do the graphical smiley's? As you can tell from my last post I did something wrong.

Thanks,

Roni

Thanks to all above,all the dg teachers antia, rina,elena and many many more i really and truly appreciate this advice. Im tired of my credit getting in the way thanks for the advice. Im not leaving this family until ive made myself and u guys proud of ur great inspiration and knowledge.Even though I know that i will never leave. wink wink. Thanks for making me believe that we all dont need a liciense but the knowlege and DG BARM book and that we can all learn from we each other. This book is just like college to me, im going to re read it again and now take the time out to take action.
Thank u

hi and thank you. your credi is important so do all you can to fix it. doing this you will have to rely less on others

I thought the info in Dean's book, "Be a Real Estate Millionaire" in Chapter 7 (particularly on pages 89-91 for FICO score improvement) was a great source for improving your credit scores, finances, spending habits, etc. I have also heard recently that paying your bills a little early instead of on the due date may improve your scores as well.

Personally, I like setting up early exactly what date I want to pay my bills online through my bank... makes it a lot more convenient. I have been working at improving my scores for about the last year. Recommend subscribing to a credit monitoring service. They usually charge a minimal fee and gives you 24/7 access to your credit. Also gives advice as to how to improve your scores, gives forms to send to credit companies if you want to dispute something, etc. Very helpful in monitoring your credit report and improving FICO scores for the NEXT GOOD R.E. DEAL!

Lesa