How far back should I go in my Letter of Explanation?

[Anonymous]

Hi There -

My boyfriend and I are going through the pre approval process right now.  We've been asked to provide a LOX to explain each negative item on our credit reports.  The mortgage consultant said to go back 24 months.  But is that 24 months from the "Reporting Date", "Date Opened", or "Date of Last Activity (DLA)"?  We worked our butts off to clean up our credit over the last couple years and everything is paid.  However there are negative items on our reports from over 24 months ago.  Any help would be appreciated!  I just want to be sure we give the underwriter exactly what they need without giving them the next edition of "War and Peace"

Thanks!

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

I suggest you explain everything negative on the credit top to bottom - not just in the past 24 months.  You wouldn't want an underwriter to assume the worst on anything, just give them the truth and their mind won't wonder.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Shane!

One more quick question if I may - am I supposed to write 1 letter and discuss each item within that or 1 letter for each item (ex. 5 deragatory items = 5 seperate letters)?

Thanks for your help!

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

Welcome - 1 letter covering it all should be sufficient.  You can write out what happened in a few sentences/paragraph, and then at the end say "This covers X, X, & X items", then for the next incident (if there were multiple times there were periods of negatives) do the same.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again, that helps.  I figured it would be kind of redundant to write 1 letter for each item, but I didn't want to make an assumption.  You know what they say when you assume....