June 2, 2020
Do you know what your credit report says about you right now? If not, you aren’t truly prepared for your home loan application and may learn the hard way about issues on your credit report including identity theft, reporting errors, etc.
If you have not looked at your credit reports, you should not fill out loan paperwork; there are many issues that can affect your mortgage loan application and they are directly related to the contents found in your credit file.
Three Credit Reporting Agencies, Three Separate Credit Reports
Don’t assume you can just pull a single credit report–consider what all three of the major credit reporting agencies have in their files in your name.
These agencies do not share information, which makes it more important for you, the future home owner, to know what all three reports say.
And you can learn why from reading the official sites of the three major credit reporting agencies.
Independent Credit Reporting
There is a FAQ section for one of the “big three” reporting agencies, TransUnion, that includes answers for creditors who need to report credit information to TransUnion.
One of those questions is telling–in this context, it refers to a company that wishes to submit credit reporting data on a consumer”
The question: “Once a file is transmitted to TransUnion, how long will it take to update a consumer’s file?”
The answer is that in general such updates can be reflected in your file as early as 72 hours from submission by the creditor. But that’s not the telling part.
Consider another question in the same section of the TransUnion official site–“When a credit data file is transmitted to TransUnion, will the updates be forwarded to the other credit reporting companies?”
The answer from TransUnion? “No. You will need to report the files to each of the credit reporting companies individually if you want each credit reporting company to receive the updates.”
Review Each Report
You may or may not see the same information in the credit reports you request from all three agencies. Is it possible that you will see identical information in each credit report?
Yes, but until you’ve actually verified that it is not safe to assume the reporting information is accurate across all three reports.
And if you find inaccurate information in any of the three credit reports, you will be required to dispute that information with each credit agency individually.
Joe Wallace has been specializing in military and personal finance topics since 1995. His work has appeared on Air Force Television News, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and a variety of print and online publications. He is a 13-year Air Force veteran and a member of the Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association. He was Managing editor for www.valoans.com for (8) years and is currently the Associate Editor for FHANewsblog.com.
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