advice for heading in the right direction regarding home ownership

[sprmario]

my suggestion is by definition dishonest... but it is legal and it works.

Start systematically disputing all the negative items on your credit report.

The law is that if they cannot verify an item on your report within 30 days, they have to remove it. This law exists because frankly the credit bureaus are absolutlely terrible. I had a lot of negative things from my early 20s... however, there were also all these ludicrous items on my report that were clearly not mine. I was born in '72 and yet i had mortgage for a house that ran from '76 to '87.

These guys affect so many people w/ their scores and reports and yet they are terrible record keepers. Anyway, just start systematically writing letters disputing one item at a time. (don't send in a bulk dispute, because if you do they can dismiss it completely for being frivolous).

Don't use the online dispute system. It gets processed a lot faster and it's more likely they can get to your dispute and verify it in 30 days. Use actual mail sent to the company's dispute resolution department.

What I'd do is start w/ obviously false and incorrect items, and be systematic about it. keep copies of the letters and send the same dispute to each agency that has that item all at once.

I'd go ahead and spread these out 3 weeks apart for each dispute, and just keep disputing, whether or not items are correct or not.

after 4 or 5 months' you'll probably eliminate a good chunk of negative items. If you still owe money and are under any collection, you can start negotiating to the people you owe money to to pay them but they need to sign a letter that states that it was not late and incorrectly reported or something to that effect. so that it can be removed from your report that way.

There are a couple of really good forums that have form letters for all of the letters you should use and more ideas.

There are all sorts of tricks to maintaining high credit... like don't close down old large credit lines.

Good luck.

[Sniper]

If you have closed credit card accounts that are now paid up, you should call them and request that they be reopened!

[tripper]

sprmario, would you mind giving a name of one of the forums you mentioned?

Thanks

[sprmario]

credit.about.com had some good info, so did the motley fool (www.fool.com) personal finance credit improvement forums. I really can't remember any more off hand, but a good 20 to 30 min looking around on google should find you more. Just go to places that aren't trying to sell you anything. There are a lot of people w/ really bad credit (400s and 500s) that have tons of experience w/ this. Mine was mediocre in the mid 600s and i upped it in a few months to around 720 to 740.

I think I got the form letters off the about.com site but I couldnt' find them in the few min i looked. Sorry, i couldn't be more specific but this all happened about 2 years ago. My credit has stayed in the 715 to 730 range since then.

If you are planning on buying a car or house any time soon I would recommend spending some time on this.

FYI, there are a few things that you can't worm your way out of... like tax leins. I guess the government keeps good records [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. THe main reason a lot of other things are easy to dispute and get taken off is that financial institutions are constantly been acquired by one another and old records are deleted.

For example i had a crappy record paying my First Union Visa. It ended up getting acquired by some bank I can't remember then by wachovia, and then wachovia sold my account to providian. By the time i disputed all of the old late payments they couldn't verify them and they were removed.

[sublime]

[ QUOTE ]
my suggestion is by definition dishonest... but it is legal and it works.

Start systematically disputing all the negative items on your credit report.

The law is that if they cannot verify an item on your report within 30 days, they have to remove it. This law exists because frankly the credit bureaus are absolutlely terrible. I had a lot of negative things from my early 20s... however, there were also all these ludicrous items on my report that were clearly not mine. I was born in '72 and yet i had mortgage for a house that ran from '76 to '87.

These guys affect so many people w/ their scores and reports and yet they are terrible record keepers. Anyway, just start systematically writing letters disputing one item at a time. (don't send in a bulk dispute, because if you do they can dismiss it completely for being frivolous).

Don't use the online dispute system. It gets processed a lot faster and it's more likely they can get to your dispute and verify it in 30 days. Use actual mail sent to the company's dispute resolution department.

What I'd do is start w/ obviously false and incorrect items, and be systematic about it. keep copies of the letters and send the same dispute to each agency that has that item all at once.

I'd go ahead and spread these out 3 weeks apart for each dispute, and just keep disputing, whether or not items are correct or not.

after 4 or 5 months' you'll probably eliminate a good chunk of negative items. If you still owe money and are under any collection, you can start negotiating to the people you owe money to to pay them but they need to sign a letter that states that it was not late and incorrectly reported or something to that effect. so that it can be removed from your report that way.

There are a couple of really good forums that have form letters for all of the letters you should use and more ideas.

There are all sorts of tricks to maintaining high credit... like don't close down old large credit lines.

Good luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

thanks for the detailed advice mario. one question i have is are there any companies/law firms who specialize in doing this?

i don't want to appear overly lazy, but i despise the hassle of these things. of course, if the fees are overly large i will suck it up and do it myself.

[sublime]

also, any recommendations for where to open a secured credit card?

[Hack]

[ QUOTE ]
also, any recommendations for where to open a secured credit card?

[/ QUOTE ]

your local bank will do it.

you're in the boston area right? That's where Fleet(well now Bank of America) is based. Look them up in your phone book and go down to your local office and they will be glad to give you one. Here is the important thing about secured credit cards: whatever amount you deposit with them, that's what your limit will be. You can't charge more than what you have in your account. It's basically a glorified debit card, only it helps people build credit as well, because it doesn't debit the money from your account, and a bill comes in the mail.

[kidpokeher]

Also compare what you see locally to bankrate.com. They have a search function for different types of cards including secured as well as low apr, no annual fee, etc...

[Sifmole]

[ QUOTE ]
ugh. well i followed that link and got two reports (equifax, transunion) and transunion says in the summary table that i have a delinquent account and one malicious remark?? however the report itself just shows up to date and paid/closed accounts.

also, my credit score is poor/fair (600's i think) and they suggest to improve it to open more lines of credit. however when i have tried to open lines of credit the last year (credit cards) for this specific purpose i get declined for for poor credit.

i honestly have no idea what to do about either of the aforementioned problems.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you previously have late payments, missed payments, on credit cards? other loans? a 600 is quite low so there must be some history there.

Two other key factors are your available credit to income and debt to income ratios. I don't recall if you are one of the resident "poker income only" guys, but this will also cause you some additional aggravation; but will not stop you from getting a mortgage eventually.

However, a "poker only" situation combined with a 600 score is going to mean that you will be presented with mortgages that have high interest rates.

First time home-buyer: only works for fairly low price houses ( under 200K or something like that ).

[sublime]

all-

i have looked for secured credit cards, and wells fargo appears to be the best. can someone check the terms linked and make sure i am not missing anything ($18 annual fee seems impossible to avoid, whatever i dont plan on having it more than a year). i get confused with the grace period verbiage. yes, i am dumb in this area.