@Anonymous wrote:
I have a FICO score of 798, 805 and 803. I recently sold my house and I am currently in the market to buy a new one. So far I have two inquires on my report and I soon will have three. How does this affect my score. I tried hard to keep up with my debt. But, these seems to be a problem. Will this lower the score. Why is it when inquiries are made that it affects the score. We need to write to our politicians. For instance, I plan to contact there lenders without using lending tree, but on my own.
When you app for mortgages and car loans, all the inquiries made within a certain time period will show up on your reports, but they are lumped together and scored as one inquiry. (Would be nice if they did that for credit cards!) This is under the Credit Education tab up above:
What to know about "rate shopping"
Looking for a mortgage or an auto loan may cause multiple lenders to request your credit report, even though youre only looking for one loan. To compensate for this, the score ignores all mortgage and auto inquiries made in the 30 days prior to scoring. So if you find a loan within 30 days, the inquiries won't affect your score while you're rate shopping. In addition, the score looks on your credit report for auto or mortgage inquiries older than 30 days. If it finds some, it counts all those inquiries that fall in a typical shopping period as just one inquiry when determining your score. For FICO® scores calculated from older versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 14 day span. For FICO® scores calculated from the newest versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 45 day span. Each lender chooses which version of the FICO® scoring formula it wants the credit reporting agency to use to calculate your FICO® score.
The reason that creditors report inquiries is to let one another know that you are actively seeking credit. This can be for perfectly normal reasons, as in your case, but it can also be because someone is in serious financial trouble and is desperately looking for any source of money they can find. So essentially, in reporting inqs, creditors are comparing notes with one another, attempting to see who is a reasonable credit risk. One statistic says that people with 6 or more inquiries are 8 times as likely to declare bankruptcy (although I don't think that this relates to mortgage shopping.)
That being said, your scores are utterly fantastic. They are far above the level needed for the best rates. With high scores, there can be quite a ding for inquiries, but even then, you should have lenders fighting over you.
The usual thinking is that any score at 760 or above is all you need for getting the best APR's for any type of credit. Having higher scores, as you do, provides a cushion against such things as a drop resulting from inquiries.
BTW, nice work in knowing your FICO's. An awful lot of people think that the scores that they buy for 5 bucks from the credit bureaus are their real scores, and they can get some dreadful shocks come application time.
Happy house hunting!
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
