INQUIRIES

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 04/02/2007 - 14:31
Forums

Over the last few months I have mangaged to raise my FICO from 520 to 695. Most of my negative items were 4+ years old. I had no revolving credit in August. I rehabbed my student loan-so that went out of default. From August to December, I was able to get one gas station card without an inquiry and CareCredit. Since December I was able to get 3 prime credit cards with a total of 13,000 in limits and one store card. I have charged little and paid them off right away. My question: I now have 5 inquiries on my credit report and several new accounts. How will this look when trying to buy a car with good financing in about a month?

What type of Inquiries are they – Soft or Hard?

If you request for loan or credit card w/e, creditors run an inquiry known as Hard Inquiry, it affects your Fico. But, unsolicited inquiries are not considered while calculating your Fico Score. Moreover, all the inquiries done in a specific time span, (7 – 10 days I guess) are considered as 1 inquiry, thus a faster shopping for loan may not hurt your score much.

My submission is: Inquiries may damage your score but I don’t think that creditors would take it as your drawback especially when these are old.

Wed, 04/04/2007 - 10:40 Permalink

Well..............each time someone checks into your CR, your score can drop a bit. I din't think that was possible, BUT, I guess you learn. A few years ago, I had ALOT ( about 10) inquiries. EACH one dropped my score, by a few points. I don't think the 'pre-screened opt' offers do, though.

Sat, 08/25/2007 - 20:00 Permalink

Hard inquiries remain for two years unless you are able to bump them off using a daily pull service.

Thu, 08/30/2007 - 17:47 Permalink

I dint understand what you meant by daily pull service.

Fri, 08/31/2007 - 05:58 Permalink

Daily pull service would be a subscription to a credit monitoring service that allows you pull a CR every 24 hours.

I do not understand how they could help you bump them off using such a service.

Fri, 08/31/2007 - 11:01 Permalink

Morningstar there is a known flaw in the file size of reports on the Equifax and Transunion sites. By pulling everyday your softs overload your file and force your hards to be bumped off so they are no longer visible to a creditor.This does not work for Experian as there files let you hold anything. There is also another trick for Equifax but that I will share by pm only so they don't close out that opportunity.

Fri, 08/31/2007 - 11:15 Permalink

This is pretty interesting.

:D hope we get the pm as well Cajun.

Sat, 09/01/2007 - 11:09 Permalink

Laura pm me and I will dig up my notes on how to do it. It is best to share by pm so this trick is not closed out by them.

Sat, 09/01/2007 - 12:14 Permalink

Wow..I never knew that, either. Well...I DO know , one of my BIGGEST debts, on my CR will be paid off in the Spring of next year. Boy..I can't wait!! Everything, reguarding this negative account, will be broguht 'up-to-date' and have a positive rating on my CR. Really excited!!

Sun, 09/02/2007 - 22:41 Permalink

Don't worry too much about the older credit inquires. We all hear that every inquiry affects your score, but the fact is that really only the recent inquiries (within 1-90 days) are the ones that matter.

This is because a potential lender really wants to gauge what you might be getting yourself into when they see a lot of new inquiries .... For example, they may see 5 inquiries in the same day/week/month. True, you could be shopping around for the best rate. But on the other hand, if you apply at 5 places and all 5 approve you for credit, the lender is worried that some people don't know their limits and will actually open an account with all 5 of those places. That's not a good thing to take on a lot of new debt in such a short period of time.

Since it usually takes up to 30-60 days for a creditor to report whether you actually opened an account, potential creditors (and the credit score) tend to be cautious when they see recent inquiries on your credit report, because they can't really tell whether you took on new credit or not.

Your inquiries that are more than 90 days old really have no bearing on the credit score or a lenders approval, because if that new account hasn't been reported as a tradeline to the bureaus yet, then it is safe to assume you didn't open an account with whoever made that inquiry.

Mon, 09/03/2007 - 19:15 Permalink

Very true...........I think, the LESS inquries, the better. But, Credit Collector, this does make alot sense. The more you 'clean up' you credit and the more you take care of your debts, with little inquiries, ...the better your credit will be.

Mon, 09/03/2007 - 21:13 Permalink

Inquiries are factored in under the new credit column of the Fico scoring model. The max damage or good done in this column is 10%. Inquiries are calculated by Fico for any inquiry that is less than twelve months old.

Tue, 09/04/2007 - 10:23 Permalink

As an underwriter for a auto finance company, I just want to say that I think the "Credit Monitoring Services" have put way too much emphasis on your credit score in order to get you to buy your own credit reports every month.

Everyone goes ga-ga over their score, but the reality is that I don't even use it to make an approval. Sure, it pops up when I pull an applicants credit, but it really doesn't have any bearing on my approval. The main things I look at don't even show up on your credit report -- income, length of employment, and length of residence.

Credit scores were put in place to "aid" the approval process, and there's a thousand different scores I can buy too - there's the FICO 04 Classic, FICO 06, Bankruptcy Risk Model, Auto Risk Model, etc, etc, etc. And each have a different formula for calculating the score.

True, the inquiry that you made 11 months ago when applying for a credit card, might be dropping your score by about 2 points. But when all is said and done, and it's time for me to decide to approve or deny credit, the score has very little impact on my decision. I will go down to the bottom of an applicants credit report, and actually look at all the inquries that may be making up that score, and my own rationale is posted above.

Tue, 09/04/2007 - 12:17 Permalink

I monitor on a 24 hour basis for fraud & identity theft protection.I only pull real Fico scores about four times a year or before a major purchase.

Tue, 09/04/2007 - 13:38 Permalink