Well, here goes...the good, the bad, and the ugly! I thought you might want to share in my journey as a single mom trying to buy a first house (a little pathetic in my late thirties, but better late than never).
I started my goal in February with the following eq 593 (now 646), tu 577(now 622), and ex 590(now 664*). All are FICO except the current experian that is from Experians freecreditreport.com. I plan to pull that through FICO. I have Score Watch and the TU (My Fico) Identity Theft watch.
I have a barrage of issues that some of you may identify with...
- Multiple defaulted student loans from years past that never seem to drop off no matter how old they are (I had them re-purchased in Dec 05 and are showing as a new account since then with no lates and perfect status), but the old ones are so damaging and they show new every time they were sold, etc. so 4 overall loans look like 12!!! Has anyone had luck with dealing with student loans? I tried to dispute some that I thought were inaccurate or duplicates, but it seemed to make it worse.
- Bankruptcy that is now 7 years old, but has 3 more years before it drops off.
- Old Collections - all but 3 were paid. Of the 3, 2 are minor balances (<$100) and the other was bigger. My lender said they would have to be dealt with, so like a dummy, I paid the highest one. I now know that it will appear as a current issue and despite the $0 balance, it will hurt my score. Stay tuned and I will report the damage as I expect it to hit any day... Has anyone had any experience with asking to pay past collections as a condition of escrow instead???
- Judgements/lein ...this part kills me. I have an Innocent Spouse status with the IRS (my ex was a real creep, which is a big reason I have all of these messes to begin with). However, the State acted on unpaid taxes only notifying the "primary" (my ex) and not me - something about their process says they don't have to, how convenient. While the IRS was giving me IS status, the State gave me 2 judgements and a tax lein. Now they are working on applying my IS status to the State. I really hope that they will remove the lein at that time, but I have no idea what to do to get those judgements removed. Since they are judgements, can they be reversed, removed, anything??? Will this take another lawyer? I would appreciate anyone's past experiences on this
- On the positive side I have 4 strong accounts with low/no balances and no lates ranging from 7-22 months old.
Well...welcome to my saga. I will keep you posted and I appreciate any helpful input you have
LER