Ready to begin credit repair - not sure where to begin.

[nethoop]

I currently have several negatives listed on my report - 2 are public records that have been paid and are scheduled to be removed in 2 years, 7 are medical with CA (the same CA), and 2 are utilities.  All totalled, I have a balance of $3,465.  All are valid, the only recent (within the last 6 months) was a utlity for $1,716 (included in overall total).  I have one car loan that will be paid off in 7 months ( payments on time for last year) and student loans that are reporting as "pays as agreed" as well.  I have no credit cards or other loans. All 3 reports are indicationg a 15 yr credit history, and an average FICO of 562.

I'm told that I need to increase my FICO by approx. 40 points to qualify for the mortgage terms I'm after.  I have the money to pay all debts, and am about to make contact with CAs to do so, but have a few questions:

How difficult is it to raise my score 40 points?

What are my best options going forward to do so? 

My plan was to just pay the CA holding all 7 medical accounts to try and settle, but after reading posts indicating that the paid collections weight the same as the unpaid, I'm wondering if I should contact them  to see if they would do a PFD if I PIF all accounts instead.  Is that the first step, or even a good step?

Any help is greatly appreciated

[guiness56]

Hi and welcome.

Did you get all 3 reports from annualcreditreport.com?  If not, make sure you do.  You get a free one from each CRA each year.  These reports are the most detailed and accurate.  Ones from a 3rd partty are not.

Where did you get your scores?  The only place you can get a FICO for TU and EQ is here, at myFICO.  EX no longer sells their FICO score to the consumer.

Before you pay anything or contact a CA know what the DoFD of each account is and your states SOL.

Never contact a CA by phone, always in writing.

Know who owns each account, the OC or the CA.

It is always much better to work with the OC when possible.

For instance, on the medical debt, contact the OC and see if they still own the debt and if they will take the payment and pull the accounts back from the CA.

[nethoop]

I did get all three reports from freeannualreport.com, I got the scores from the TU website (after I viewed my report I clicked the link that allowed me to view my score for 7.95) and from freecreditscore.com.

I can see the DoFD listed in the reports, but do you know where I can find the SOL for NY?

Thanks for the info on the OC, I was absolutely going to call the CA thinking I had no other option.

Can you tell me if 40 points is an  insurmountable amount of points to overcome or not? Is a 3-6 month timeframe reasonable?

Thanks again

[guiness56]

I hope you mean annualcreditreport.com.

You can not get FICO scores from TU or EX.  You can at EQ but you have to look for it.  What you got are not FICO scores.

40 points is reasonable if you get the collections deleted.

[nethoop]

Apologies...yes I do mean annualcreditreport.com (I got nervous for a minute and had to recheck...lol).  So if those weren't my FICO scores what were they?  I checked my bank account to see what company it was that I made payment to for the score (I've been all over the place researching that I wasn't positive of my recollection) this is what my bank has listed: DDA PRE-AUTH DB EQUIFAX ECIS FA EQUIFAX ECIS FA 888-567-8688 GAUS...so I'm assuming it wasn't TU, but EQ instead. 

I did some research online about the medical CA and at the moment seems promising that they don't own the accounts based on their "services" and "about us" pages, but I will make contact with the OC tomorrow to see what I can do.

[guiness56]

You can get only a EQ FICO score from EQ but you kinda need to search for it.  If you got all 3 chances are they are FAKO.

Scores that are not real FICO scores are called FAKO (fakeo) scores.

The only place to get your real FICO TU and EQ are on this site.  As I said you can get a EQ FICO on EQ but you have to look for it.