Shopping for a mortgage loan? DON’T worry about inquiries on your credit report
We’ve all heard it before. Having someone pull your credit will reduce your credit score. Sadly, many people end up making some poor decisions based on half truths, and bad information.
The fear of reduced credit scores with the occasional pull from a creditor is the most annoying, misleading, and misunderstood thing I hear every week in the mortgage business. If you are worried about “inquiries on your report”, this isn’t the concern most people think it is.
What to know about mortgage rate shopping.
Looking for a mortgage, auto or student loan may cause multiple lenders to request your credit report, even though you are only looking for one loan. To compensate for this, the score ignores mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries made in the 30 days prior to scoring. So, if you find a loan within 30 days, the inquiries won’t affect your score while you’re rate shopping. In addition, the score looks on your credit report for mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries older than 30 days. If it finds some, it counts those inquiries that fall in a typical shopping period as just one inquiry when determining your score. For FICO scores calculated from older versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period was any 14 day span. For FICO scores calculated from the newest versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 45 day span.
Furthermore, inquiries, even under the worst of situations, could only account for 10% of your overall score. Most people should have absolutely NO CONCERN whatsoever about inquiries on your credit report unless you have applied with 10, 15, or even 20 lenders in the past 90-days.
Visit MyFico.com to find out the truth about inquiries and your credit score, and STOP WORRYING!