Need a bit of step by step help before I even think of a mortgage!

[Anonymous]

Hi, everyone.

I'm in the process of rebuilding my credit in hopes of being able to get a mortage for a little house in Indiana (about $40k) with my soon-to-be husband. My own score right now is 588. I'm not sure of his yet but last I understood, it was probably lower than mine. I'm making about $17,000 right now (yay for a useless college degree!) and will be entering graduate school soon. He's not employed yet, but when he is, it will be a minimal income since he's in school full time. I rent right now, and easily make my $600 a month rent payment ... a house payment would be much less though, and would save us money in the long run. We're hoping his little income combined with mine should put us close to $25,000 a year jointly.

Equifax states that my former name was Marisha Morgan (it was not, this is my mother) and I also have several of her bad cards listed on my report, namely two bad debts/collections and one card with delinquent payments. I recently dropped a dispute letter in the mail (nearly a month ago) telling them that my name was never Marisha, and that these cards were never mine. I did not sign for them.

I'm hoping they'll get rid of those soon. I plan on calling them today to check on the progress.

As far as my own credit issues go, I have one collections on my report that was paid in full over a year ago. Now it's just sitting there and I don't want it there anymore! I also have two CC's. On Chase, I was delinquent twice (30 days) over a year and a half ago. On Capital One, I was deliquent 3 times 30 days and 1 time 60 days, over a year and a half ago. (Stupid college kid.)

I've heard so much about getting this delinquencies removed by getting in contact with credit grantors ... I've also heard about writing good will letters to the collections agencies (mine is ProCollect) to get collections removed.

Now that I've written to EQ (will hit up TU and EX soon) how do I go about trying to get some of these delinquencies off and getting the collections off?

What addresses do I write? What do I say?

I've searched the forums but am really hoping to get some step by step advice.

Thank you!

Melissa

PS - I have a student loan right now to the tune of about $8000 that is deferred and in good standing. Will that affect my attempts at getting a mortgage?

[Coreyswife4ever]

I also had a relative's debts listed on my credit report.  I called the companies that he owed the debt and they told me it wasn't them reporting the debt on my credit report.  What happened was one of the credit bureaus had his social security number and name listed as an alias on my credit report.  So I had to call the credit bureau and go over every piece of information from the spelling of my name, social security numbers, etc.  They took all of his information right off.  Make sure you call them asap and have that information removed.

[Anonymous]

Update!

Just got off the phone with CSC (an affiliate of Equifax that I'm supposed to report to because I live in Indiana) and they're going to go about having my mother's information removed from my account.

It occured to me that once I get all her bad debt off my account (two defaulted cards, one card with late payments) and write some GW letters to CapitalOne and Chase  that should hopefully knock some delinquencies on my own cards off ... my credit report will look quite pretty!

I wonder how much it'll go up after all that? 588 to what? Maybe I'll be able to qualify for a mortgage on a little house after all?