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We are planning on buying a new construction house. It won't be ready until May, so I'm not worried about getting the actual mortgage, but want to get pre approved. Will this affect my credit score, and if so how far in advance should I get the pre-approval?
The lender I am working with is giving me 120 days pre-approval letter. Next time they are pre-approving me I am loosing about 10 points in avarage for it.
The way we did this last year - we were not getting new pre-approvals after the first one and if we saw the house we were ready to make an offer for, per our contract we had 5 or so days to do it.
My builder required me to go through a pre-approval with their preferred lender within 3 days of signing the contract to purchase. I was not required to get the actual loan with that lender, but they wanted a pre-approval based on submitted docs. After that, I was free to shop around and choose my own lender if I wanted. As it turned out, I went with that lender as they gave me an incentive towards closing costs and they had the same rates as everyone else.
I would try to find out what your builder will require so you can figure out what you need to do. If you just want to figure out what you can afford or be qualified for, you can get a pre-qual, or use one of the many online calculators that are out there.
Trying to explain credit, could write a book and still not cover every detail....
I remember with one credit bureau the score could drop severely after three hard pulls in one week. The worst I have every seen was this guy having 125+ credit inquires over a course of a year with his score in the low 500's.
If a borrower credit score dropped slightly origination and closing. An old loan officer trick if there were too many inquiries. Saying never gave permission to have your credit report run, and dispute and remove inquiries off your credit report.
Equifax: 800-685-1111 (general) or 800-525-6285 (fraud); P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374; www.equifax.com
Experian: 888-397-3742 (general and fraud); PO Box 2002, Allen, TX 75013, www.experian.com.
TransUnion: 800-888-4213 (general) or 800-680-7289 (fraud); P.O. Box 2000, Chester, PA 19022; www.transunion.com.
Equifax and Experian do not offer online reports, you have to send a written request to receive your personal report. Transunion does offer online viewing, but it will not show the actual FICA score (you have to pay for that).
Modification Specialist, your example may suffer from reverse causality bias.
Anyway, it's no big deal to run your credit for a mortgage pre-qual. Oftentimes my firm pre-qualifies borrowers several months in advance and the credit score stays solid. It's no big deal to get pre-qualified now and figure out exactly what your capabilities are. Then, your mortgage lender would re-pull your credit once it's time to get the loan (if enough time passes to warrant a re-pull).
Bottom line, you'll be fine to do it whenever you want.
Equifax and Experian do not offer online reports, you have to send a written request to receive your personal report.
I'm a little confused about this statement, I've been getting my Equifax report online for years, they also SELL a product where you can pull reports and scores from the 3 major agencies. I've also pulled it through Experian.
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