6 quick fixes for your credit score

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6 Quick Fixes for Your Credit Score

Q: What do you advise a financially fithomebuyer to do to increase their credit scoreor make themselves more attractive buyers, toqualify for the lowest mortgage rates?

1.Pull your reports online – get them for free, nostrings attached, at the credit reportingagencies. Look for errors that could bedepressing your score, like accounts that don’tbelong to you, balances that are actually lowerthan reported, old debts that are paid off thatshould have been removed entirely.

2. Consider reopening accounts you thought were open but have been closed because you haven’t used them in so long - it will help boost your utilization ratio, one element of your credit score that is dependent on how much available credit you have.

3.Pay down some debt. This both decreasesyour debt-to-income ratio (36% is the goal,including the proposed mortgage payment) andincreases your credit score, if you do it right.

4.Don’t close any accounts. Instead, spread yourdebt out. The ideal utilization ratio is about 20-30% of your available credit overall, and on anygiven account. Closing accounts reduces theamount of credit that is available to you, so itmakes it look like you’re closer to being maxedout.

So if you have one card that’s near its max and several others that have zero balances and you’re

trying boost your score a bit, quickly, consider balance transfers to spread your debt more

evenly, aiming for 20-30% of the available credit on each card.

5.Use your credit regularly – and pay it ontime, every time: Having a good credit scoredoesn't happen because you have soundpersonal finances, including no debt. creditscores are a measure that shows that you have ahistory of responsibly using and managing andrepaying your debt on an ongoing basis.

6.Finally, check in with your mortgage broker. Have them pull your report and score, as the report they pull is the one they’ll have to go by in the final analysis. If you’re really close to a score level higher, that would empower you to qualify for a lower rate, they can actually run a credit diagnostic on your score and generate some recommendations for which actions you could take to raise your score by the needed few points. Then many of them can do what’s called a ‘Rapid Rescore’ – once you’ve paid that bill off, they can actually submit a request directly to the credit bureaus to update that information and your score in just a few days.

What other credit fix have you used to increase your credit score?

Randy BettInvestment Realtor/Author/Investor

Real Estate Professionals Inc.Better Group Real Estate 202-5403 Crowchild Trail NWCalgary, AB T3B 4Z1

Phone:403-774-7464 Ext:1Fax:403-208-0082Toll Free fax:888-711-6801

Randy Bettwww.BetterGroupRealEstate.ca