If you're ready to buy a new house, then you'll want your credit to be in good shape so you can qualify for a low interest rate. Good credit is important for other things too, such as a good rate on a car loan or the ability to lease an apartment without a cosigner. It's good to monitor your credit report so you know how it stands and you're not taken by surprise when you apply for a loan or an apartment and are turned down. If your credit is in bad shape, you can often take steps to improve it. Here's how.
Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Credit Score
Your credit score is a combination of many things, such as the age of your credit, the number of credit lines you have, the amount of available credit you have, and the number of late payments and charge-offs. If your credit cards are near their limits, you'll have a lower credit score than if your cards were all paid off. By working each month to pay down your cards, your credit score will go up, and if you can pay them off quickly, your credit score will go up quickly too.
Another thing to watch when you are trying to have a good credit score for a loan is the age of your credit. This is averaged out among all your credit cards. Consider how adding a new credit card will affect the overall age of your credit as that could impact your score. It's probably best to avoid applying for new credit until you've gotten your loan or apartment. Plus, every time you apply for a new loan, an inquiry posts to your credit report and too many hits can drop your score.
How a Professional Credit Repair Service Can Help
If you have errors or black marks on your credit report, you should think about using a credit repair service to fix the problems so your credit score improves quickly. Waiting for negative marks to fall off could take several years. Credit repair can get your score up in a matter of months. This is done through legal means by working with your creditors and the credit bureau to remove mistakes and multiple reports on a single issue. If you've been a victim of identity theft, working with a credit repair service could be the best way to restore your credit and get rid of negative marks that are not your fault.
Repairing your credit this way is possible because of regulations that require fair, accurate, and substantiated reporting to the credit bureaus. If a creditor can't prove the negative remark is accurate, the credit bureau may remove it. Also, credit repair agencies work with all three credit bureaus since they can contain different information.
If your credit score is low and you have negative marks on your report, talk to a credit score repair service about your options. It might be possible to remove some of the negatives. Removing these negatives, along with your efforts to improve your score by paying down credit card balances, might be enough to elevate your credit score into the range needed for your loan or lease.
