No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
Two common misconceptions about inquiries:
1 - Your score goes up when they "fall off" of your report. This happens after 2 years. This is untrue because all points associated with an inquiry come back after 365 days; it becomes "unscoreable" at that time even though it remains on your report for another year.
2 - Points come back "over time" as an inquiry ages. This isn't true. If a new inquiry results in the loss of X points, when a scoreable inquiry goes away you'll gain X points back. This happens at a single point in time, not gradually over the life of the inquiry.
@Anonymous wrote:
I wonder why people act like an inquiry that's 9 months hurts less than a brand new 1.
I think it's common to think that way, as other factors such as negative items adversely impact a score less over time until they fall off. Speaking of falling off, you used that expression a few times above, but what I think you mean is "became unscoreable." It's important to distinguish between these things, because "falling off" means off of your report which is what happens at 2 years and no points are realized at that time, where becoming unscoreable simply means reaching 365 days in age. I'm pretty sure that you understand this, but someone else reading the thread could get confused.
The inquiries fading is a forum (and probably consumer in general) myth. I had it concretely during my mortgage process and other people later confirmed it that an inquiry on equaled and inquiry off one for one, no fade over the entire year.
@Revelate wrote:
The inquiries fading is a forum (and probably consumer in general) myth. I had it concretely during my mortgage process and other people later confirmed it that an inquiry one equaled and inquiry off one for one, no fade over the entire year.
I wonder if it's really so easy to separate out the impact of an inquiry, since they are usually accompanied by other things, such as new accounts.
Yup.
I also think that the misconception of them fading over the course of the year is fueled by unisolated/unsolid data points.
Someone may see a score increase of (say) 2 points around 6 months after taking on an inquiry and because "nothing else changed" in their eyes they feel the 2 points came due to the 6 months passing. What many people don't understand is that a file ages on the 1st of every month, meaning that 3 age of accounts factors increase by 1 month, so it's completely possible that those 2 points came from aging of accounts (for example) but gave the false impression that they were from the aging of the inquiry.
@SouthJamaica wrote:I wonder if it's really so easy to separate out the impact of an inquiry, since they are usually accompanied by other things, such as new accounts.
I think it's extremely easy and cut and dry if it's executed properly. Someone pulls their score before the inquiry, then pulls it immediately after, but without crossing the 1st of the month. This of course would happen before the new account(s) associated with the inquiry land on the CR. Say X points are lost. 364 and 365 days later the same thing can be done, again assuming the 1st of the month isn't crossed. After 364 days, no points have come back and after 365 days X points are gained. This with 100% certainty verifies that the points come back in 1 shot, not gradually over those 365 days.