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I'm about to apply for a mortgage. Before I applied, I wanted to pay down some credit card accounts. I checked my TU and EQ scores before I paid down the debt and both were in the high 690's. This past weekend, I paid off 3 credit cards and a furniture store credit card, so the balance on those 4 are zero now. I checked this morning, a Thursday morning and nothing had changed. My balances with the creditors are zero when I check all of the websites but when I ran my credit this morning, it still reflected the old balances and said credit utilization was hurting my score.
I've always heard credit reports were real time but it's been several days since I've paid these off and it doesn't appear that the new balances have been reported to the credit bureaus. How long does it take for a company to report to a bureau, how often do creditors report to bureaus, and when should I expect to see teh impact of the zero balances on my credit score? Also, if I go to a bank and a loan officer runs my report, will they see a different updated score or the same thing I see?
I have found that they generally update 7-14 days after they cut their statements. If you want the $0 to post, make sure not to use those credit cards until after the statement cuts showing the $0 balance due.
It's a waiting game & sometimes waiting is very, very hard
Calzonan wrote:
If you're in a real hurry you can have your LO do a rapid rescore and update the balances with the CRA's.
@Anonymous wrote:
Can you just dispute the balances forcing the bureaus to update the balances with the creditors?
If you dispute the balances, that can create other issues. For a mortgage, underwriters don't want to see disputes on the credit report. It can hold up a mortgage, and it can take a lot of time for the dispute notation to disappear.
I dispute selectively and seldom.