Your Credit Report

The information in your mortgage credit report has a major impact on whether or not you qualify for a mortgage loan and what interest rate a lender will offer. Therefore, it's important that your credit report reflects a positive image of the way you manage your money. If you're getting ready to buy a home, checking your credit report - before your lender checks it -- is the best way to ensure you get the loan and interest rate you deserve. Checking your credit before applying for a loan can alert you to problems that you should address or errors in your credit record that you should seek to correct.

Get Your Free Credit Report Online

There's an easy way to get your credit report. Federal law requires that each of the three major credit repositories provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every year, from www.annualcreditreport.com.

Note that your free credit report will include three credit histories, one from each credit repository. There may be differences between each history, depending on which of your creditors report to the various repositoris.

Your Credit Score

When lenders obtain a copy of your credit report, they also request that the report includes your credit scores along with your detailed credit history. Here is the definition of a credit score, from the web site AnnualCreditReport.com:

A credit score is a complex mathematical model that evaluates many types of information in a credit file. A credit score is used by a lender to help determine whether a person qualifies for a particular credit card, loan, or service. Most credit scores estimate the risk a company incurs by lending a person money or providing them with a service –– specifically, the likelihood that the person will make payments on time in the next two to three years. Generally, the higher the score, the less risk the person represents.

If you decide to obtain a free credit report it will not include include your credit scores unless you agree to pay for the scores. That's because the law does not require providing your scores to you at no charge, and because scores really only are meaningful to lenders, not consumers. However, if you want to obtain your credit scores so you can enter a realistic score value in our mortgage pricing lookup system, thereby getting a more accurate set of mortgage quotes, there is a way to get your scores.

Purchasing Your Credit Score

You can purchase a credit score by contacting one of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies.

Equifax - www.equifax.com

Experian - www.experian.com

TransUnion - www.transunion.com

You can also purchase a credit score when you request your free annual credit report through www.annualcreditreport.com.