Pay Charge Offs

[Kennie02]

My DH and I want to get a mortgage soon. I have been working on my own CR but I started looking at his. It is bad! He has 11 baddies on his CR. One paid collection and another that he is making payments off. The rest are CC's that have been charged off. We want to get them paid but I am not sure who to send the payments to. Neither of the CR have a CA listed for these cards. Do we pay the CC companies? Would it be a good idea to settle these? or should we PIF since we want to get appvd for a mortgage? Any help would be appreciated!

[bigboytoys26]

You def want to have everything paid off or settled with all of the creditors. Lenders don't want to see anything on your reports that could turn into a judgment. If this happens then the creditors can put a lien on the house that you just bought. I have 4 chargeoffs on my reports and I've paid off the collection agencies that these were sent to. If you don't know who to pay then just call the original creditors and they willl let you know who they sold the account to. You also want to look at the age of these bad accounts. In some cases its not smart to pay off older accounts because it would reactive (setback) the clock time in which it will stay back on your reports. For example you may not want to pay something that charged off 6yrs ago because it would likely be falling off of the credit report within the next year. For this I would check to see what the statute of limitations are in your state. I would just pay the settlement amounts IF none of the stuff on the reports can be paid for delete.

[Whitneyy]

The collection that he has paid off, try and send a goodwill letter to have it deleted. Be persistent with it, they might not respond, and might just update to reflect the change. I have called and sent letters for GWs, they both have worked. But all experiences may vary. 

If your charge offs are with collection companies, I would make contact with THEM and see what your options are. If paid, would they erase? If they are not with them, and still with the orginial creditor, I would ask them to do me a solid by pulling it back from the charge off status, paying in full, and then asking them to delete. Again, your experiences may vary. 

[Kennie02]

Thanks for all the advice! Unfortunately these charge offs are fairly new. I just pulled all 3 CRs and some aren't coming off until 2019. I thought that taking settlements looked bad to underwriters?
I will def be sending GW to the paid collection. I am hoping to see even a tiny jump in his score by getting this deleted. Like you said it would be even better if I could pay the OC since they aren't reporting by a collection agency