A few years after bankruptcy and tax liens - what to do?

[lmgold]

My current Transunion FICO score is 698. I'd like to increase this to get as favorable home and auto loan as possible in about 12 months.

I had a Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharged in June of 2009. Additionally (and the reason for the bankruptcy), was that I had several tax liens filed leading up to that. Several credit card accounts were included in that bankruptcy. I still have a couple of open tax liens that date back to 2007. My understanding is that from a score perspective, it wouldn't help to pay those off (I have an installment agreement however), but of course in manual underwriting I assume it would make a difference.

I opened up an Orchard secured credit card with a $500 limit immediately after filing bankrutpcy - so back in 2009. I opened another secured credit card for $1,000 with Bank of America in 2011. The Orchard (now Capital One) card was graduated to an unsecured card earlier this year. Bank of America declined my request to graduate the card and advised me to try later.

In March, I opened a Target card for $300, a Chevron card for $400, and a Capital One card (another) with a $2,000 limit. So I do have a few recent inquiries but I figured I needed to open new accounts to boost my credit. I use those cards but do not keep any balance - they are paid off each month.

Lastly, I opened a secured loan with my credit union for $1,000 in April with a 6 month term. This was simply to diversify my credit with an installment loan.

Obviously the bankruptcy and liens will affect me until they come off and there isn't much I can do about that. I know about the IRS' program to remove past liens and will try but I doubt it'll work.

Is there anything else I should be doing right now to improve my score?

Thanks so much.

[lmgold]

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[09Lexie]

My suggestion would be to work on getting those liens off. The IRS Fresh StartbProgram worked well for me andvitbonky took 4 weeks from start to deletion. My liens were from 2007 and paid but I'm sure just their mere presence were reasons for denials. I apped again a few months later and received cc's from Chase and Discover.

Google Fresh Start Program, it will be worth it to you.

Good luck!

[guiness56]

One suggestion is to not pay all of your CC to a 0 balance.  FICO doesn't like that.  Have all but one card report 0 balances and the other at 9% or below.

Other than what was already suggested, just let them age for the next 6 months to a year with on time payments.

[lmgold]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm aware of the Fresh Start program and that would be ideal. A couple of those liens were included in my bankruptcy, so I'm not sure if they would be eligible since they were released (via bankruptcy) but not actually paid. I haven't been able to find anything online that discussed that situation.