Credit Run Buy Unknown Sources Multiple Times

[Art Maydan]

My lender sent me an inquiries form that lists everyone who's run my credit this year. Two of the companies are the other lenders I was talking to before going with this one, but a few run my credit multiple times and I don't even recognize them. What's the deal with that?

Credit Plus ran my credit 3 times. CBCINNOVIS and INFORMATIVE RESEARCH I did too. Why is this and is this a problem with closing my current loan? Overall, I have 10 credit inquiries this year.

[Matt J.]

Hello Art - I think I can shed some light on this as I work for a credit reporting agency.

Credit Plus, CBCInnovis and Informative Research are all credit reporting agencies. Meaning that most mortgage lenders (PrimeLending, Waterstone, Chase, etc.) don't got directly to the three credit repositories (Equifax, TransUnion & Experian) to pull your credit when you apply for a mortgage. They use a credit reporting agency, like Credit Plus, to pull your credit. The reason they use a credit reporting agency is that they pull your credit data from the three bureaus, consolidate the all the info, get rid of duplicate info and put it together into an easy to read format for the mortgage lender.

If these credit reporting agencies pulled your credit they should have had permissible purpose, meaning you applied for a mortgage with a lender and that lender uses one of those three credit reporting agencies.

Now, the bureaus allow a 30 or 45 day window (depending on what score model the credit reporting agency is using) where they will group/or count all mortgage inquires as ONE inquiry during that time frame. The reason for this is that they figure as a good consumer you're rate shopping or trying to find the right lender. So, You apply for a mortgage on the 1st of the month, the 15th and 25th and even though these three inquires will show on your credit report they will only count once against you.

Do this, request a copy of your credit report and look at the "Score Factors" beside your each of your bureau credit scores. There will be four, or five, score factors. They are listed in descending order of impact on your score. I rarely see "number of credit inquires" having a major impact on the score, usually its the fourth or fifth item.

For more info go to myfico.com .