I have been in the credit industry for years. First of all, for anyone in the state of Ca. to be in the credit repair business, they must have a $100,000 bond on file with the state. Second, they cannot collect fees prior to delivering services. In other words, if they promise to “clean” your credit, they cannot collect until they have delivered. There are ways around this, the coaching approach may be one, sign up or membership fees are another, but the State may feel otherwise.

You are on the right track to do it yourself, if you have the time. There is nothing a credit repair company can do that you cannot do yourself for the cost of your time. All three bureaus actively try to put these clinics out of business because they are mandated by the FTC to help for free. They are not always responsive and the process is confusing, which is what the repair folks are taking advantage of.

Thanks for chiming in. I’m very much interested in the subject the more I get into it, and look forward to writing and learning more about it. Given my interest, I sometimes think I should be on the loan side of the business.

The business point of the seminar (which was at a title company) was to get referrals from lenders. One thing that put me off somewhat was that I never got a good answer to my questions about how a consumer could shop for a loan without pulling his report multiple times and getting dinged for that. I think the speaker was afraid to suggest that he’d do anything besides help a lender sell a loan, and from a lender that’s what you would want, I guess, but I’m not a lender.

Really ethical credit counseling surely has to entail the realization that some folks probably should be talked out of a loan rather than sold one. I’m sure that there are folks who need to improve their score because they’re disorganized or have inaccurate information in there on the one hand, and folks who either have bad credit because they’re broke or are broke because they don’t manage their credit well. If they’re really broke, even fixing their score won’t make them a good candidate for a loan, even if you counsel them to live within their means and improve their score.

Keep in mind that there are different scores out there that can score differently. With a mortgage, all three bureaus sell a Fair Isaac score. At their websites, they sell a different score that is scaled differently. It’s goal is the same, but a 700 with a Fair Isaac score is not the same as a 700 score sold at the bureaus web site. Also, the bureaus have different validations of the Fair Isaac score. They revalidate these every few years and so the scoring models change reflecting the market. I have seem a mortgage broker pull a report and submit it to a lender who then pulls a report on the back end and gets a different score. All the information was the same, but each used different validations of the score. Confusing, isn’t it.

With the most recent validation, all mortgage inquiries pulled within 45 days will count as 1 inquiry in regards to your score. Pulling a consumer copy of your report has no effect on your score.

I train folks in the mortgage industry about credit scores (I sell the credit reports to them) and 95% + do not even know that the score is a deliquincy predictor. That means that the score is trying to predict whether an individual will go 30 days late sometime in the next 24 months. Once you understand that, it becomes logical that your recent activity weighs more to caculate your score than something over two years old. A 30 day late last month will hurt you more than a bankruptcy 5 years ago. Also, balances on relvolving credit (credit cards) is key. If you are at 90% balance to limit, you have a better chance to go late than someone at 30% balances. Hopefully that helps a bit.

Hey, looks like I’m ahead of the game. One of the first items from the seminar the other day was a chart of score ranges to the odds of being 30 days late. So now I know more about credit scores than 95% of the mortgage industry!

The other thing that came out yesterday is that that forty-five day limit you mentioned may actually be shorter given the cycle of when information is refreshed, but I don’t know if you’ve seen that.

You don’t happen to be a rep for Credco, do you? If so give me a call Monday — I had some pricing questions, (530) 672-9160. Meantime thanks very much again for pitching in with some excellent info.

I am a competitor of Credco, but I would be happy to give you a call anyway. Service is key in our industry, especially with the market what it is these days. Didn’t want to barge in on your site and solicit, but the topic is one I know and wanted to help. Let me know if you would like for me to call.

Reporting from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. My partner and I have a complex we are selling for a local developer. We have basically turn to a third party credit company to help us with a huge wave of buyers very low credit scores to help them get their credit scores to a minimum that will allow the mortgage company to finance them.

I bought a home a few years ago and used Jennifer over at Strategic Credit Coach. She really helped us and was very knowledgeable. My score raised enough to get the home and we have been very happy since.

Now we are looking to buy a bigger home and because the market is lower we are going to keep our house and rent it. Our new lender said we need a 680 fico and currently we have a 677 but with the advice (what you call coaching) I learned from Jennifer I now know how to raise my score in a short period of time.

The price I saw in this blog is less than what I paid so they must have lowered what they charge, but either way I do not have the time to do it myself even though they told me how to before I signed up.

Also, the realtor that told me about them loves them too, and about their website: give them a break, they are a family owned company that puts their time into their clients not the web.