Mortgage Shopping?

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

I am looking to purchase a house within the next couple of months and would like to do some lender comparisons. How do I go about doing this? From what I read and heard so far is; if I shop for a few lenders during a certain time period it will count as only one inquiry? If so how do I space this out, a couple of days after, a week, etc? Please let me know what my options are in finding the best deal.

Thank You,

Carl

[llecs]

I wrapped up my mortgage a month ago, but we also did some comparison shopping. FICO does take your inquiries (mortgage and auto) and lumps them together for FICO scoring purposes. The window for that varies with the CRA and FICO version used, but it ranges anywhere from 14-45 days. I think the older TU FICO version (TU98) as found on here is 14 days whereas the TU version that most use (TU04) is 30 or more days. Not 100% certain on that. The EQ version found here is used by most lenders and that for sure is 30 days.

When you apply, you will not get dinged for that inquiry at the get go. Once the clock expires, then you'll get a score ding. Any added inquiry between that first pull and the end of that time frame will be ignored for scoring purposes. Once the window expires, then your score could get dinged for that first inquiry. When I applied, I had no inquiries reporting and experienced no score change when they appeared. On EQ, exactly 30 days later, I got a 3 point ding for that added inquiry.