Your credit history is a critical factor when obtaining a mortgage
loan. It communicates your past willingness and ability to meet
credit obligations and gives the lender a good idea about how
responsible you will be in making your monthly mortgage
payment. Do not despair if your credit report is less than stellar.
If you've made some mistakes in the past but your current credit
patterns are good, many lenders will take that into account and may
be willing to make you a loan.
Get a copy of your
current credit report
(www.consumerinfo.com). Verify that
all of the information is correct, and if it's not, contact the
credit reporting company and have them make corrections where
possible. If the inaccurate information involves debts that are
still outstanding, or other derogatory information reported by your
creditors (such as department stores, hospitals, contractors, etc.),
you will need to contact the creditor/creditors and work out a way to have
this information removed from your credit report.
It's important that you do
everything possible to make your credit report as clean as possible
before applying for a loan. One of the best things you can do is pay
off all of your credit card debt and then close all of your credit
card accounts except for one or two at most.
The bottom line is that a good
credit report is your passport to obtaining a loan. A bad credit
report won't necessarily prevent you from getting a loan, but you
may need to do some work to clean it up and make it acceptable to a
lender before they'll make a loan to you. |
