Did we make a huge mistake?

[Anonymous]

We have been trying to clean up our credit for a few years now. Last year at this time we were in the low 500s.  We are trying to get a USDA rural development loan.  Our middle score needs to be 620, but 640 and above, we were told  is ideal.  We started out at 616 in January.  I haven't been keeping up with posts here, and didn't know anything about the "opt out" thing.  We just started PFD and paying down our good credit.  We had just a few collections on our CR's and some of them weren't valid amounts, but we just wanted them off our credit so we could apply for this loan.  I checked my score watch within a few weeks, and our TU went up to 649 and Eq went from 616 to 666.  We were elated!  The CAs were reporting 0 balances (all but one, but that one said it would be deleted it would just take a few weeks) clearly our paying down the small good credit cards we had seemed to make the most difference.  We put in our prequalification worksheet and were feeling pretty confident.  Suddenly in the past few days we are getting collection calls from seriously OLD debts.  These are definetly out of SOL for Michigan (which I am pretty sure is 6 years) and I am pretty sure its out of CRTP as well.  So far they aren't showing up on the credit, but is this just a matter of time?  The debts are from 2001, and were ones that we were disputing even back then.  I don't know what to do.  So far we haven't received anything in the mail from them, just sudden phone calls to my husbands cell phone, which I thought was very odd.  Any ideas?

[leah5570]

One thing I do know that will help is the bad accounts from collections can only report for 7 -7.5 years. They can try and collect for ever, till the end of time, but they can't put those accounts on your credit report 7-7.5 years after DOFD.

Don't admit to anything to the CA's, don't communicate with them at all. If your DOFD is older than seven years, don't worry about it. They can't report, and they can only send letters and call. Just don't answer. I think you can send a C&D letter so they can't call you, without admitting liability or ownership of the debt. All on how you word it. You should be safe.

Congrats! Those are awesome scores!