My first convetional 30 year loan

[Milos N.]

Hey peeps.

I recently found a deal I wanted to conventionally finance it. I asked my agent to give me a lender, and he gave me 3.

Me, not really knowing what I'm doing I asked for a pre-approval from all 3 of them.

There was a few surprising things:

1) My credit rating was actually lower than what credit carma, and bank of America (Fico score) shows. Those apps show 767 or something. What came on a paper was 747. What gives? Even now, a few weeks after the fact. Credit carma still shows it higher, than what came on those papers from those lenders.

2) Now one of the the credit tracking company (Equifax) shows 3 additional inquiries. All three done on the same day (19th of January) but strangely enough all three done by the same company (Something like 'Credit plus'). My only explanation that all 3 lenders use the same company for doing hard inquires.

Even stranger Transunion shows only one hard inquiry.

So a few questions:

Was it a mistake to ask to be per-approved by all three?

How come Transunion only shows 1 hard inquiry, while Equifax shows 3? Will this even out in the future? 

Will it even out to 1 or 3?

I remember watching a Phil Pustejovsky's video where he advises people to go "shop for a loan". he claimed you won't get the hard inquiry hit if you do it in a short amount of time (credit companies will treat it as one). Was that BS?

Thank in advance