Collections and FICO score

[Anonymous]

Hi,

We are going for a mortgage, and my wife needs to increase her score by roughly 30 points.  We have paid off everything, cleared much of her CR up, but there are two medical collections from around '06.

They show "paid, closed", but I don't remember us paying them, and disputing them results in nothing.  Is it worth sending a PFD letter in hopes to get it off, will it make that much of a difference?

Otherwise, we were just told to wait and let the score go up.

[fused]

Welcome to the forums!

myFICO has just launched a medical debt board, so I will be moving your thread over there.

[fused]

Exactly how soon are you looking to buy a house?

[Anonymous]

We are already in the process of it.  We are enrolled in their homebuyers club which helped her get her score up nearly 100 points in just a month, we just need a little more.

[fused]

I never advise people to fix their credit while they're in the process of purchasing a home, the results could be disastrous. If you try disputing this med collection, its likely your wife's scores will fall further. Does your wife have high credit card utilization? If so, paying it down can wonders to scores.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, everything is now paid off, that made a huge increase in the score.  I just didn't know if trying to get these two off would help or not.

[fused]

I'm sure having the med collections deleted will help her scores, but its a HUGE risk to take. When you dispute collections (paid or unpaid, it doesn't matter, FICO treats them equally), its highly likely the collection agency will send the credit reporting agency an "update". When this happens, FICO scoring treats it like a new collection. Scores then tank. I don't want this this to happen to you folks. Can you try your luck with a different lender?