Hard Inquiries

[doctorofcredit]

I've got a question about hard inquiries. A lot of websites present two things as facts:

They stay on your report for two years.
They effect FICO scores for the first year. 

Just wondering if there is a specific law for either of these (e.g they must not affect credit scores for a period of no more than twelve months and they can't stay on a report for more than two years). If not, how do we know these are true? 

[Kratos-TM]

We know it to be true because FICO tells us it's true. It's not a presumption, it's a fact. 2 years on the report, 1 year effects your score.

[llecs]

Ditto to the above. I don't think it's in the FCRA, but it's common practice not to report inquiries beyond 2 years. I've been pulling for nearly 2 decades now and never have seen inquiries report for longer than 2 years, give or take a month extra.

Per FICO, it's also common knowledge. You can pull your FICO report via myFICO at any given time and you won't see inquiries report for longer than 1 year.

[Anonymous]

Is it possible to contact the company that did a hard pull and have it removed from your credit?

From what I've read, every HP drops your score by 5 points. 

It just happends to be my luck that I didnt know this before I went on an app spree. 10 apps within two days. and some of the companies pulled more than once. 

so yeah.

[Gunnar419]

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@Anonymous wrote:

From what I've read, every HP drops your score by 5 points. 

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Sorry for what happened to you, fireguy. The 5 points for every HP is just an estimate. It really depends on your credit profile. I just hit 777, made one app and lost 11 points. Ow. When my score was lower, the 5 point thing seemed more realistic, but even then it varied.

It's harder getting points back than it is to lose them besides.

[Gunnar419]

Oh, and it's almost impossible to get valid inquiries removed. Only if they're the result of fraud do you have much chance of getting them taken off.

[llecs]

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@Anonymous wrote:

From what I've read, every HP drops your score by 5 points. 

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Prior to finding myFICO, I too read the same thing. I began pulling my FICO reports on here frequently just to see if that was true. At the peak and all inside a year old I had 30+ inquiries each on EQ and EX, with approx. 10 or less on TU. I found that most all of those inquiries resulted in no FICO change. The new TLs hurt my credit but the inquries didn't. I later wised up and only applied for credit that I needed and boosted my scores into the 700-club in a hurry after 12-18 months. Even as those inquries were stopped being scored and new ones appeared after carefully apping, I found that I would lose anywhere from 0 to 5 points tops for added inquiries. I usually took a hit when I had 0 inquiries reporting with no new TLs inside a year.

[Roarmeister]

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@Kratos-TM wrote:

We know it to be true because FICO tells us it's true. It's not a presumption, it's a fact. 2 years on the report, 1 year effects your score.

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Canadian EQ keeps a record for 3 years but will keep a min. of 5 inquires.  I think they only score for the first year though - this from personal evidence only.

[Roarmeister]

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@Gunnar419 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

From what I've read, every HP drops your score by 5 points. 

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Sorry for what happened to you, fireguy. The 5 points for every HP is just an estimate. It really depends on your credit profile. I just hit 777, made one app and lost 11 points. Ow. When my score was lower, the 5 point thing seemed more realistic, but even then it varied.

It's harder getting points back than it is to lose them besides.

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From my personal records, I got a 5 pt bump when an inquiry dropped off.  But that is muddied a bit since I also had $90 on one card paid off that particular week so the bump may have been more like 4 pts.

[Kratos-TM]

If you have an "elite" score (upper 7's and 8's), then blows are dealt at a much higher value. I recently saw a 12 point gain when an inquiry hit the year mark. When my scores were in the low 7's, the 5 point rule applied very well and consistently.