topic Re: Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around? in Mortgage Loans

Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around?

jimmyjam — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:19:40 GMT

Hi All,

I have been approved by my bank for a mortgage and my new realtor wants me to talk to his mortgage broker guy about shopping around for a lower rate. MyFico says that I have 30 days without the inquiries affecting my credit scores and the mortgage guy says it's 90 days.

Does anyone in these forums know which is correct? I am reluctant to shop around if it is going to affect my score and I realize now that I should have done all of my inquiries at the same time. MyFico says that my scores could be affected by as much as ten percent, depending.

So far I have the info from MyFico's website that states 30 days and the word of the mortgage guy, who says it is 90 days (and who has an obvious vested interest in all of this).

If there is a better forum to post this question in , please let me know that, too.

Thanks!

Jim

Re: Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around?

Tuscani — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:23:00 GMT

90 days is false.

from myfico.com:

What to know about "rate shopping.": Looking for a mortgage or an auto loan may cause multiple lenders to request your credit report, even though youre only looking for one loan. To compensate for this, the score ignores all mortgage and auto inquiries made in the 30 days prior to scoring. So if you find a loan within 30 days, the inquiries won't affect your score while you're rate shopping. In addition, the score looks on your credit report for auto or mortgage inquiries older than 30 days. If it finds some, it counts all those inquiries that fall in a typical shopping period as just one inquiry when determining your score. For FICO scores calculated from older versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 14 day span. For FICO scores calculated from the newest versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 45 day span. Each lender chooses which version of the FICO scoring formula it wants the credit reporting agency to use to calculate your FICO score.

Re: Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around?

jimmyjam — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:53:12 GMT

Thanks for the info. Now I would like to know if there is a way for a broker to determine which scoring methoid a given lender uses, or is that a secret that they hold near and dear to themselves!

Wish I had thunk of this all before.

Regards,

Jim

Re: Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around?

Tuscani — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:51:43 GMT

What do you mean "method"?

Re: Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around?

jimmyjam — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:44:37 GMT

By "method" I mean the older calculations that allow for 14 days and the newer that allows for 45 days after the application to "shop around".

Bear in mind that I have no idea what I am talking about. I'm new to all of this mortgage biz and the previous information is my understanding of what I have read and heard so far.

Thanks for the dialog!

Regards,

Jim

Re: Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around?

Tuscani — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:46:55 GMT

To be safe, I would stick with a 14 day window across the board for now.

Re: Mortgage: How Much Time to Shop Around?

jimmyjam — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 02:14:53 GMT

Tuscani,

Thanks again. I waited a bit too long then. Oh well.

Regards,

Jim