What else can I do?! PLEASE HELP!

[jbishop1001]

My goal is to get my score up enough to apply for an FHA mortgage. I cannot get myfico scores from scorewatch because of an error (my birthday missing) on Equifax's report - but I have used 2 other monitoring sites. 549/569/588 (I faxed my info to Equifax today to fix the error)

Open Installment (DTE): $0 balance now (previously $570 reported 120 days late. Account is 3 years old)

Credit cards: None open on my last pull. Just opened a secured card with OpenSky for $200 and have not gotten my first bill yet.

No judgements/bankruptcy/public records

Lots of inquiries (But a lot are old, 1 in the last 6 months)

3 medical collections totalling $797 (over 5 years old - marked as never paid)

My credit monitoring keeps telling me stop being late and open a credit card... so I did it. I contacted DTE to have them remove the negative lates but they refused. Will these lates affect my mortgage application? How long should I wait? I understand I need to make my payments on time and that will help but what else can I do at this point?

[mortgagedean]

Hi, 

My name is Dean and I'm a mortgage officer out of Miami.  I've been in this industry for over 20 years now and I can tell you that the credit cards will help out tremendously however the collections will need to be addressed to get your score high.  Paying them off will not do any good.  In fact, it'll drop your score because it'll update on the credit report. MODCUT

Where are you trying to get a loan? 

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Shogun, myFICO moderator

2nd warning

[Revelate]

See your other post; 3 identical ones, not needed FYI.

[takeshi74]

Address the derogs as they have the most impact.  Visit the Rebuilding subforum.

[RobertEG]

PFD offers on the unpaid collections will, if successfull, both get satisfaction of the unpaid debt, and remove them from scoring.