Do not waste your money on a credit repair company. There is absolutely NOTHING you can not do on your own, that they would. Endless people end up on the forums, drained from paying the scoundrels and you will not get the results you want.
Since your shortest goal is to buy a home (behind saving like there is no tomorrow), is to both you and your girlfriend (if she will be a joint applicant), to pull your free annual credit reports.
Go over them with a fine tooth comb, noting any paid accounts that may have had derogs, late payment, etc. When is the date of First Deliquency reported? It will be a good 7 years before they will age off your reports.
Keep your credit and payments clean here on out, set up auto payments as a backup, so no hiccups will haunt you with a late pay.
Work on getting any card that is over 30% of it's credit limit below 28.9%. These are thresholds for score bumps, the higher the utilization the more severe the dings to your scores, and potential for adverse action such as balance chasing, or worse, closing your account with a balance.
Do not apply for any new credit of any kind, the inquiries stay on your report 2 years, but unscoreable after a year. Let your accounts age and grow ie. credit line increases.
Do a one time 3B pull here on MyFico and obtain your "middle" score. If will be joint app, the lowest of the two will be the score lenders use. These are and can be higher or lower than your FICO 8 scores, and you do need all 3 to obtain the "middle".
Try to reach out to creditors, collection agencies and obtain pay for deletes if you have outstanding bills reporting. Call the ones that have lates and ask for goodwill deletion of lates. Might be a bit hard if you have numerous lates, and it may take months of writing to CEOs, and saturation of 3 a month, wording differently and time before they reach out to you. Or it could come to a halt and have to wait the 7 year period from pay off.
Is the money you are paying now on the repo, the remaining balance after it was sold at auction?
It may take longer than a year to be in a mortgage position, just time and don't give up. With your new income, perhaps when the baby is born and in a year, you can rent a bit larger place that will suffice but not break the bank savings until you have a good down payment, closing costs, and well under the DTI ratio, and most important the best scores for best rates.
