I have never had derogatory information on my credit report. My FICO has always been 800. I own 2 houses, my oldest line of credit is seven years old and I have never missed a payment on any account.
In January my credit report dropped from 850 to 675. I am trying to figure out what happened and what I can do. Additionally, I recently moved to Colorado where state law requires you be informed about negative items added and a high number of hard inquiries.
Here is some recent history:
I paid off a car loan in October.
I closed on a hour in December (my second).
In January my score dropped.
The alarming thing is in February I got a notification about a dereogetory report. After looking into it it was a $5 account from an urgent care that was charged in 2013. It was sent to collections sometime late last year when the debt was sold. They had my wrong address and phone number since 2013.
Additionally last week I got another notification that there had been more than 8 inquiries into my Equifax report in 12 months. I don't see how this could be true, in the last year I only authorized 3 (1 for a credit card, 2 for the home loan).
My questions are:
1) does that extreme of a drop seem normal for my recent history, including the $5 dollars collections account?
2) What is the best way to deal with the collections? I have no problem paying $5 but will that make it disappear off my history that I had an account in collections? Should I dispute it because they had wrong contact info or does that hurt my score more? I don't remember going to an urgent care in 2013,but also don't care if I lose out on $5 as long as my credit comes back up.
Thanks for your help!