If you have the time to do the repairs yourself, it's more cost effecient, and you can tread more carefully, instead of just disputing everything under the sun, as most of the repair clerks do. Keep in mind that no credit is ever repaired overnight. Days to destroy, years to rebuild.
Anything, and everything you can possibly need is on this site. It's no different than what you're already paying someone else for.
Read, read, and read some more.
I'm not going to bash Sky Blue Credit...they did a fantastic job getting my credit up from a low 500 to a 647 in a matter of 5 months. I will now take the reigns and deal with these collections. The only reason i'm doing this now is, while i can get an FHA loan easier with my credit score, i would rather have a conventional home loan as a first time buyer. However, If I fix these collections by paying them off it will hurt my credit short term....but how long is short term? I don't want paying these things to backfire on me and not be able to then get even an FHA loan because it slapped my credit back to the grave. Do you get my drift? I want to do this in the least hurtful way to my credit and i'm nowhere near a pro, nor do i know anyone who is. and i've heard no good things about MCM which makes my situation even harder. Do I go with an FHA loan and suck it up and then refi down the road, or is refi even an option with FHA?
I had 24 negatives on my CR. Now I only have 6. They are low $. I know I can take care of the paperwork...that's not the issue. The issue is...i need to know if it's in my best interest to pay them or let them go, in order to get a home loan. I've been renting for 8 years and i have $30k to work with. I just know from reading that by paying off old Collections that it brings them current and they will stay on ur CR another 7 to 10 years...the SOL in Illinois. If i don't pay, they will fall off in 2015. Seems like noone can direct me as the best way to go. Even FHA is telling me to get rid of the Collections. So I guess my dreams of home ownership are not going to happen next year.
I'm not 100%, but if FHA sees a derog that says balance 0, they'll turn a blind eye to it, but anything over $100 will be questioned by the underwriter, and maybe (stretching this) forgiven/ignored, depending on the total derogs. On a conventional 20, they'll expect to see zeros/paid.
So, my question... do I pay the settlement MCM offered since they have written down they will mark it "Paid in Full" once I pay the settlement? Or do they then have the option to sell the rest of the debt to another CA? These things I have not seen anywhere but i've heard of tricks these CA's play. How long would it take for my credit to recover by paying off 6 collections, 4 of which are under $100.
1)Always get it in writing, before sending them money. "pay for deletion" not "settled," which means the remaining balance is sold off to another CA
2) Don't forget that you'll probably wind up doing a rapid rescore, right before the mortgage app.
3) Depending on what the collections are... if they're cards, it might actually lower your AAOA, and credit spread (even derogs have a good credit symbiosis), which can drop your points. If they're all from CA's you'll go up in points, if some are from OC's you just might lose something good.
burned2manybridges, they are all CA's, not OC's. Hopefully this is better than the OC's? and in the form I got from MCM it says this..." Your Credit report will be updated with each payment made, and once you've completed your agreed-upon payments to settle the account, your credit report will be updated as "Paid In Full." So does that mean it won't show as "settled" and that they won't sell it off to another CA?