Need some advice

[jmartin2683]

hello everyone.  this forum is awesome!

anyway, i've been working for a couple weeks now to rebuild my credit.  I had a student loan defaulted that i was repaying ECMC $50/mo for eternity on.  I also had a closed credit card with a balance still on it that was 85+% of the limit, and 3 old collections that i owed money to.  I paid up everything in full, including the student loan ($2700ish), and my credit score has gone from EQ 552 to EQ 585/TU 605 in less than a month.  i didn't do PFD for the collections, as i didnt know about that yet, though one of the CA's removed it without me even asking.  I'm very excited as i plan to buy a new car once i get above 620-650.

i have a couple questions, though.  when ecmc marked my account as 'paid in full', they left a couple 'FP' statuses for a couple of the months that i was paying them the $50, even though it was never late.  i disputed this through the bureaus.  do they ever actually remove things?  i also have an account listed as (month over month) 'OK', 'OK', 'OK', '90' (as in 90 days past due).  obviously it's not possible to go from current to 90 days past due in one month.  is there any chance of having this corrected as well?  this is particularly important because the payments showing as missed from ECMC are the only recent (within last 6 months-1yr) baddies i have.

so i plan to purchase a new car soon.  either a mitsubishi or a scion.  i'll have 10% to put down on a 25-35k car.  i've never missed a car (or motorcycle) payment in my life (several paid loans) and have had all the loans through a credit union i've been a member of since birth (28 yrs).  i have an annual income (myself, wife not included) of just over $60k, and i currently have no debt whatsoever.  i just opened a capital one secured $200 limit card which is my only account and hasnt even shown yet (ive yet to receive the card in the mail).   i've lived at my current home for 2.5 years, though i'm moving back to a house a used to live in previously (my sister owns it) next month.  not sure if that'll hurt my chances.   i've been employed at my current job for a year, and the one before that for 2.5yrs (i'm a software developer/consultant.  it's rare to work on a single project for much more than a year).  i currently have 5 inquiries showing, the most recent of which was the capital one card this month.

i hear toyota/scion have pretty easy financing, is this true?  also, my credit union got absorbed by a huge corporation recently, so i doubt anyone there even knows my name anymore.  im afraid my relationship with them may be invalidated with the acquisition.  

so, what are my chances of actually getting the loan presuming i wait a couple months and can get the score up a bit?  what's my best course of action for actually getting approved?  could capital one blank check be an option?  thanks!

james

[Shogun]

You've done some excellent work with rebuilding.  Have you tried the GW process for the baddies on your CR.  I'm here to tell you they work!  Maybe give it a try.

[dodfire]

Good Job....Great start....stay focused and work hard, it will pay off!!!

[mauve]

BTW, I have a Mitsubishi connection (OK, a lot of them, cause I used to work there) if you want to check out what you can get with a friends discount. PM me if you're interested.

I also just financed a Certified Used Toyota - apparently you can get their promotional rates down to Tier2 or something like that. My auto-enhanced scores in my sig are from the auto loan pulls - the TU one is from my credit union, the EX is from Toyota. CU offered me 2.99% (lowest they do is 1.99%) and Toyota gave me 1.90% (lowest they do on Certified).

I'd highly recommend walking into a dealership with financing in place and asking them if they can beat it.

[mauve]

Oh, and you should get a good jump from opening that card - assuming it's our only revolving account. I still recommend doing whatever you can about derogatory information on your reports, and to keep that balance reporting 0 unless you got a few more cards.

[jmartin2683]

yes it will be my only open account (revolving or otherwise) once it reports after the card gets here.  according to the simulator on here, that should get me between 605-635, so a pretty big bump.  i'm thinking that at 620+, with a nice downpayment and killer DTI i should be good for a loan.  i'm not sure if it's worth trying my CU since they've been acquired by a megacorp and i hear CU's are usually more picky about who they lend to. 

i'll definitely pm you when i'm ready to pull the trigger, thanks!

[jmartin2683]

something weird happened this morning.  i got an alert from myfico saying my fico score had changed.  i checked, and it had gone from 585 => 587.  not great but i'll take anything i can get.  when i check what account changed, it's weird:

	Old Report	New Report
Balance:	$0
Past due:	$0	$0
Status:	Pays account as agreed	At least 120 days or more than four payments past due
Last activity:	2/1/2007	2/1/2008
Description:	Consumer disputes - reinvestigation in process	Defaulted loan - claim filed against guarantor Balance paid or being paid by insurance company

doesn't it seem like this should hurt me?  it looks worse now than before.  how can this be?