From what I understand it varies depending on your current credit file. For instance someone with a much higher score may see more pts lost than someone with below average
Starting Score: 485 06-20-14
@ChrisinKC wrote:My loan officer said hard inquiries will reduce your score 3 - 5 points. So if you're right on the line right now between scoring tiers, you'll be even further away from the higher scoring tier after the credit pull. A nice little way of FICO to assist the bank with charging your a higher APR.
In my opinion, there should be a 0 point deduction for credit pulls for apartments. You're not buying the apartment complex, are you? You're not asking the apartment complex to borrow money to you, are you? I'm assuming you're just looking for a place to live, and FICO wants to reduce your score for doing so.
A credit inquiry seeking credit, whether for a CC, a rental, or a mortgage, indicates the person is seeking credit, that a lender of some sort (even for an apartment lease) is looking at the person as a potential "borrower". Yes, a lease is in fact a commitment by the tenant to pay $X during the next year or whatever the lease term is. It commits funds to some purpose that cannot be used to pay other debts if all debts are to be paid. The HP is a way of factoring into the persons credit file that they are taking on more debt of some kind.
The first paragraph sounds a lot like the theme of your other posts, and is not really relevant to the OP question.
@ChrisinKC wrote:
This is absolutely relavent whether you like it or not.
The OP is not borrowing any money from anyone to pay for anything related to the rent payment, so there's absolutely zero reason for having a hard inquiry on your credit report for that.
The applicant is looking to sign a lease, usually for a year, which will result in a contract being signed and payments being committed. A lease results in a lower per-month cost of rent due to that commitment for a period of time, and at the same time is an obligation that will take away funds from the rest of the applicant's income. But for the lease, if the applicant runs into hard times, they may be able to move into smaller less expensive quarters if things go badly.
It is a HP for a reason.
@ChrisinKC wrote:
Ok, so let's add hard credit inquiries for everything. I just applied for entry to a college to take a few classes. Since that's money coming out of my pocket, let's do a hard inquiry so points can be deducted from my score.
In today's world, having your insurance company pull your credit is a soft pull. Let's change that to a hard inquiry too, so points are lost.
When applying for a job, let's do a hard inquiry so points are lost too.
Undoubtedly the FICO and bank people are already having those conversations.
Since you disagree with me, you evidently enjoy losing points and paying higher APR's for ridiculous reasons.
Acceptance at a college is not a hard obligation to pay a fixed amount each month.
An insurance review is looking to see how you handle your financial life in general, because that is an indication of financial risk tendencies.
A job, seriously?
Somehow I don't think there is a banking cabal out there plotting to reduce your FICO score, saying, what's Chris doing these days? How can we ding him?
Instead, it's 150 million consumers, all engagied with varying levels of competence with their financial lives, and the banks wanting to get to a simplified number for each of those consumers to have some idea where to start in a conversation about what they can lend.