Loan pre-approval & Your credit score

[Chad Gaither]

I'm looking to get a baseline for the financing I can potentially get approved for to help narrow down my search criteria. I asked a broker at a local real estate meetup last night if a pre-approval application would impact my credit score. He responded that they could do a "soft" pull that would not impact my credit score but to get a more accurate/full pre-approval they would have to do a "hard" pull on my credit which would have an impact.

For a newbie investor, how would you recommend shopping various brokerages to get the best financing while minimizing the impact on your credit score?

Thanks!

[David Dachtera]

@Tracey Williams,

It depends what kind of lender you're shopping for.

Auto loans have a 15-day shopping window. Home loans are 30 days.

During a shopping window all inquiries of the same type are counted as one inquiry. The window starts with the first inquiry of a type and "closes" (x) days later.

Lenders typically reject "free" credit scores and reports. The reports may not be in the format they expect, and free scores are almost NEVER FICo. The only current exception is that Discover gives you a FICo score at their expense - they deduct it as a marketing expense. Otherwise, free scores are almost guaranteed to be some variant of a Vantage score.