Remove derogatory indicator?

[Katobie129]

Hello.

I've worked hard over the last several years to improve my credit.  The only baddies I have now are previous derogatory indicators, primarily on EXP.  Is there any way to get a "was late" comment removed?   I had major surgery in 2010, and was off work and had several months of not so good credit, although all are either caught up or paid off with nothing late on any account since then.   When I pulled my 3B reports here, every one of them said that a "hurting your score" indicator was "derogatory indicators."   That also seems to be the major factor in the range of my scores, with more derogatory indicators on EXP than the others.

I am about to apply for a VA mortgage, and while I know these scores are acceptable, I'd like to try to bump them up if I could.  I am buying a new house before my old one is sold, and my income and DTI/residual income are all within guidelines for doing so.   I've sold my rental house and will be paying off the majority of my debt...leaving 1 small installment loan open and one credit card with about a 8% balance when all is said and done.  But I'm figuring I need to have near perfect and squeaky clean credit because it will get scrutinized closely with the 2 mortgages.

Thank you very much for any guidance you can provide!  

EXP 700  TRU 713   EQFX 735

[Katobie129]

Anyone?

I'd really like to be able to do this if possible.  I will be moving forward with a mortgage app in the next probably 2 weeks.

Thank you!!

[RobertEG]

The "was late" comment is an observation of the party who compiled your credit report, and is not itself the factual data that is used in your scoring.

The scoring algorthm must go to the actual data, which is retained in your payment history profile, as it needs both the level and date/age of each derog.

The derogatory indicator will be "removed" if there are no derogs.  It is not separately removed based on any other process.

To get clean report for scoring, the derogs themseleves must either be deleted by the reporting party, or have reached their credit report exclusion date, and thus are thereafter excluded from your normal credit report and from scoring.

You can send goodwill requests to each furnisher of derogatory information, and request that they delete the derogs.

Such deletions are contrary to CRA instructions in their credit reporting agreements, but who knows, they may still agree to delete.

Otherwise, you must wait for ther normal credit report exclusion date to have them removed from scoring.

[Anonymous]

As Robert said... you could try writing a "goodwill letter" to the company that gave you the remarks, but it is not a fast process and you might have to try more than once. I'm telling you this because I'm not sure if you are about to apply for this mortgage in, let's say... a month? Or are we talking like 6 months from now? I had a "baddie" removed and it honestly took about 3 months for the entire process. Checking my scores constantly was actually making it feel worse.... but then one magical day.... it fell off.

Several "Goodwill letter" templates can be found via Google, if you are not sure how to word one. Basically you just write them an old Country song "My truck broke down, my dog ran away, couldn't go to work, so I missed my tractor payment." and then tell them you are wanting to buy a house.