Student Loan COVID Relief

[Fadwa Hilili]

Does anyone have experience with how the COVID Student Loan relief programs have affected your credit / ability to qualify for a loan?

• If you opted to go into "forbearance" and stop making payments:
  1. How does it appear on your credit report? Does it show that you owe a minimum payment or has it dropped your min payment to 0 and therefore lowered your D/I ratio?
  2. Have lenders raised any concerns that your account is not in "repayment" even though Navient claims they are not reporting anything negative to the credit bureaus?
• If you did not opt to go into forbearance and you are continuing to pay, again how is it appearing on your credit report? Your normal min payment less interest?
  

Bkgd: At the beginning of the pandemic when this relief was first put into place the loans stopped accruing interest so your rate is now effectively 0% and you had the option to go into forbearance without the usual consequences (this would normally be a dirty word). 

The federal student loan COVID flexibilities as they are calling them have been extended through at least September 2021.

Appreciate any insight on this

[Tim Lounibos]

@Fadwa Hilili My wife got her master’s and loan payments began in Jan 2020. Fed Loan. We’ve been in forbearance during the pandemic and probably won’t start paying again till September. Refinance our house last month and now going for a heloc. Has not come up as an issue at all and our rating is in the 800s.

Shows the balance, high credit, schedule payment as zero, and past due as zero on the credit report. No issues.