My husband and I are trying to buy a house. We were pre-approved a few months ago but weren't successful in finding a place. At the time we both had credit scores at 750+ for all 3 CBs. The market we're looking at dried up over the summer, and we saw nothing to bid on and let our pre-approval lapse, under the guidance of our loan agent. Then last week we found a house we loved and started the process of getting the pre-approval done again.
The bank ran our credit and learned that since our last report was ran a new $85 collection had shown up on my report. I have never had a late payment, a collection, a closed account, or anything negative or derogatory on my credit before. So this was news to me. After doing somequick digging and a number of phone calls later I learned that it was from a city I used to live in 2.5 years ago, in a rented condo. They charged a special emergency facilities fee to every residence every three months. When I lived in there I always paid that bill on time and in full. Apparently the landlord and/or new tenant after me was not so responsible, and at the end of last year (1.5 years after I moved out) the city sent ME to collections, because they still had my name on file for the account. And then the collections agency had the wrong address (unit #4, instead of #46), so the mail kept getting returned. So there was no way I ever would have learned of this until it showed up on my credit. To boot, I have had MyFICO's Score Watch for the last few years, and this never showed up on my Equifax report through Score Watch (apparently it only hit Experian and Transunion, but not Equifax). So, until someone ran my TU or EX credit reports, I had no way of knowing.
I have since cleared up the issue with the city, and received a letter (within 30 minutes, not bad for a government agency!) stating that it was an error and that it is to be removed from my credit report. This letter was sent to me and to the collections agency. However, if we wait around for this error to clear from my reports, it could take 30-90 days. And in the meantime we'll have to forget about buying a house.
The bank's loan processor did tell me that they can do a "rapid rescore" where they submit my letter and can get the error removed from the report and have my score recalculated in about a week. However this will cost me $100. While I'm not faulting the bank for this, I still feel it's total BS that I should have to pay $100 to have an $85 error removed from my credit report that was not at all my fault.
Are there any other methods (that are cheaper or free) of getting it removed faster? Anything I can do to speed up the traditional processes, even if we decide to just wait until it gets removed the standard way?
