Redeemed reposession question

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm in the process of buying a house, but there's a few things hurting my credit. One thing I'm mainly concerned about is a reposession I had in September 2009. I redeemed the car right away. I haven't been late on my payments since then. Now, I'm planning to ask Fifth Third Bank (my lender) to please remove the "repossession; redeemed" note from my report. It shows up as a negative account but yet it states pays a agreed. Now my question is, since I'll be done paying this loan in March, should I ask them to remove the "reposession" note before I pay off or after I pay off? All help is much appreciated! Thanks!

[pizzadude]

I don't think it would hurt to ask them to remove it now ~ a Repossession note is very likely hurting your FICO score.  

[Anonymous]

A repossession does hurt your score.  If you have redeemed it and kept current you can try a GW to see if they will remove any corresponding lates and the annotation.

Are there any lates reporting before the repo?

[Anonymous]

Well the reason it was repossessed was because I fell 2 months behind on my payment. I paid the late payments and fees and got the car back in a week. I haven't been late ever since. My credit report DOES show the late payments.

[Anonymous]

I knew you had to be late for a repo.  I didn't know if they had removed them.

Send them a GW and see if they will remove the lates and redeemed repo annotation.  All they can do is say no but it never hurts to ask.

[RobertEG]

I would wait. 

Having prior delinquencies, and knowing that CR deletion is important to you, would, in my opinion, give them reason NOT to delete now.

It could be viewed as a form of assurance that you will timely complete the remaining payments.  I would speculate that they would not want to just give away that leverage.

After completing payments, they really have nothing to gain by not deleting unless it is their policy simply not to grant such deletions.

[Anonymous]

So I should wait until I pay off.

[RobertEG]

Has your mortgage agent raised serious concerns about this?  Is it putting you on the score fence between approval and disapproval?

If he/she is already aware of the repo, then CR deletion would appear to me to be immaterial to their knowledge of the derog.  Is it primarily a score issue for qualificatin, or are you trying to eliminate it for manual review reasons?

[Anonymous]

She's aware of the repo but she states that it's affecting my score. I need to raise my score.