Home Buying 101 -- How's Your Credit?
Starting a home buying process means answering a lot of
questions: How much of a mortgage can you afford? How are your
cash reserves? How's your credit? What size house do you need?
The more questions you ask in advance, the smoother the process
will be later on. So let's look, then, at one of the key
questions from this list.
How's Your Credit?
As part of the home buying process, you need to take a good,
hard look at your credit situation. Try to do this a few months
before beginning your home search to prevent delays later on.
Start by ordering copies of your credit report.
Credit reports are maintained by three credit agencies:
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. These agencies maintain any
and all information pertaining to your personal credit --
payment habits (including late payments), bankruptcy and other
issues.
Your credit score is based on the information in your credit
reports, which come from the three aforementioned agencies.
Three agencies, three reports, three credit scores ... all about
you!
Get copies of your credit reports from all three agencies and
review your scores. Fair Isaac's -- the organization that
actually converts your credit reports into credit scores -- has
a website where you can order all three credit reports at once:
www.MyFICO.com. Here's a quote from the home page of that
website:
"FICO scores are your credit rating. Most lenders base approval
on them. You have three FICO scores, one for each credit bureau,
and you can only get all three from myFICO."
The MyFICO website also explains how to interpret your credit
score, what the score means to lenders, and what you can do to
improve your score.
Don't be surprised if you find an error. It happens from time to
time. To correct an error, contact the reporting agency
directly. And don't delay -- it may take several months to
completely correct the error and remove it from your report.