CREDIT RATING continued

                           CREDIT REPORTS

Your ability to get a home mortgage depends on your credit rating. The one thousand credit bureaus in the U.S. get information from everyone who grants you credit. So they know how you have paid your credit obligations. This information is used by computers to predict if you will repay a home loan.

Either before or when you begin the application process, you will order your credit report(s). Probably 25 percent to 50 percent of credit reports contain errors that may be bothersome when applying for credit. These may need dealt with.

Although this is changing in a year or two, there are two types of credit reports for consumers, merged and individual. Individual reports are provided by each of the three major credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Merged reports have combined data from all three agencies.

If you find any data that you disagree with, a Research Request Form is used to explain this. You send this along with any documentation that supports your case, by certified mail, to the credit bureau. You are likely to get satisfactory results, but there are plenty of court cases on these matters.

There are many companies offering to FIX your credit report. Please be very careful with these. There are legitimate ones but not all are to be trusted. And you can do much or the 'fixing' yourself, especially with the number of government and nonprofit resources available. When you have judgements, bankruptcies, late payments, and charge-offs, they can stay on your credit files for upto ten years. Only the credit bureau can change your credit files, and you can not force them to remove information that is correct.

You can obtain a copy of your credit report in several ways.

• You may buy one from the credit agencies.
• You may request a no charge copy when you have been adversely affected by information in your report.
• You are also entitled to a free report every twelve months  under Federal law from each of the three agencies. see Chris's Free Credit Report .
• Few states also allow no charge copies annually.
• There are a few other infrequently used ways.

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