Hi. My husband & I in the process of purchasing a home. Everything was going smooth until our score dropped just 8 points below we needed it to be, this past March. Now in April, we followed our mortage officers instructions to get our scores back up and it worked. He pulled credit again, and something devistating happed. A "consumer statement" just happened to appear (although it was not there on the previous 3 times he had to pull". The consumers statements was for 2 of my husband & I joint car loans, and the comment said "Consumer Statement**Deliquency due to extended unemployment", for one account and "Consumer Statement: Delinquency due to Job Layoff".
I do remember opening a dispute with experian in January of this year, right before applying for the mortgage, because I wanted whom ever that would see my credit report, to know that my missed payments were due to my ending my job at the end of 2024. Boy was that a mistake. First off, I only opned a dispute with one of the car companies (the one that said extended unemployment). I never opened a dispute for the other one, so I have no idea where the "due to job lay off" came from. Im assuming experian figured to put a comment under that account too, since I had some missed payments for that note, but I never initiated it myself.
Thankfully, we called experian and after calling several times and being hung up on once, after a few hours, the representative opened an "internal" dispute (very important it is not opened as a "regular" dispute), and got those "Consumer statements" or comments removed! They said it would have taken 24 to 72 hours, but it was removed within like 2 or 3 hours. We were able to visit the experian dispute center and check the before and after results, in which the comment was gone! Since they were gone, 2 days later, our mortage lender pulled our credit again (which was just yesterday), assuming everything would be ok. WRONG.
For some reason, our mortgage officer is not seing any dispute notes or comments, which is great!....however, something happens "behinds the scenes" when any type of dispute is opened with your account. We think its tied to some kind of law that was passed in 2022 that changed the way mortage lenders see disputed accounts and mortage lending (specifically we are trying to get an FHA loan). This "trigger" is showing our mortage loan as high risk now. So although the comments are gone, this "TRIGGER" is still there. Experian has no idea what I am taking about. But somehow, disputed accounts showing up lowered our mortage risk score from 6 (which the higher the better, 10 is the best) to 2 (which is just one step away from 1, which is the worst possible type of application, basically they cant geive anyone a mortgage loan if you have a 1 risk score). Its almost making it look like we have filed bankrupcty to our mortgage lender, or that experian sees us as being unworthly of a loan since we disputed some late payments on certain accounts, so it looks like we "admitted" that we have handled our finances poorly. This downgrade of our credit report has single handedly caused us to not be able to move forward. We have other options, like getting up to or over 640 so the "triggger" can be ignored, and manual underwritting, however, since I will not be on my job for a year until August 2025, we would have to wait and revisit this process again then (we are currently under contract with a home and the appraisal has been ordered, so we would have to let all of that go until August). We are hoping this "trigger" falls off when our scores refresh at the beginning of May. If not, we will try as hard as we can for 640 or wait till August. Talk about a huge dissapointment! Also, having the comment removed "unmasked" the accounts, basically revealing my "true score" whiched dropped my socre 8 points, once again, putting me 8 point below what my score needs to be in order to quality. Apparently, when an account is disputed, its "masked" or"covered up" which can inflate your credit score artificially. Once the dispute is removed or the account is put in the status that its no longer disputed (or if the comment is removed apparently), it "uncovers" the account, which revels its actually negative or actually has late payments, which then revels your "true credit score", which its why it dropped. I cant beleive this happened just from a dispute! My husband didnt have disputes to be "uncovered" so his score is fine, much higher than mine.
I would advise anyone thinking about or not thinking about mortages to leave disputes alone. Dont do it, especially if your credit isnt absolutly perfect and you dont have 3.5% or 5% down payment! Even though the comments are gone, it will still trigger your report to look so negative to lenders and we have no idea if this will ever get fixed or fall off.
Has anyone else had this issue, to were the dispute "comments" are gone, but your mortage lender still sees something wrong? Should we try applying with another lender to see if they cannot see this trigger? The screen shotes from our loan officers shows he is using "CRx or Credit ReportX" system and "Xactus". Hopefully Experian can "recalculate" our report (as my LO says it) to put it back to the original state, like it was before this trigger appeared.
I will try to keep you all updated. Thank you 
