How to Boost your Credit

Credit consolidation. 1-800 Fix Your Credit Now, is that the right thing to do? Let's talk about it a little, so when you're looking to purchase a major purchase whether it's a house, a car, or what have you, your credit definitely needs to be in order. Now the great thing- right now you can get an FHA loan here in the state of Florida with a credit score of around 540. We've talked about this in other videos that not all credit scores are the same. So look for that, but I want to talk about a few things you could do to fix your credit score- that's right, you can do it. So a couple things you might want to consider doing if you have a low credit score is to get one of those prepaid cards, they report every month's payments just like a regular credit card. So it's building your credit, it's important to start doing that. Secondly, don't go and open an account that's really big, and don't close an account- you think "Well I paid everything off I'm going to close it, that'll improve my credit score" It doesn't. It actually drops your credit score by closing an account anytime you have major things. They're looking for longevity, so if you're thinking about buying a house in the next two three four five years, do it now. Get the longevity going so that you have credit history, which actually weighs a lot in your credit score, so I believe a perfect credit score is somewhere around 820, so we want to make sure that we're boosting you way over the 500 mark. I actually saw a credit score once in the 200's, I didn't even know that was possible! The last thing that I'll tell you is if you're under contract or if you're ready to buy a house or anything like that, you don't do anything to your credit, don't go buy a new truck, don't let something go to collections, don't do it. The saddest story I ever had is that we had a family, it was Christmas, it was such a great time of the year to buy a house, they were so excited to about getting into the new house for Christmas the week of closing- I kid you not, they had a $20 bill from the hospital go into collections, they didn't pay- dropped their credit score by a hundred points, they lost the house, it was literally one of the saddest things I've ever seen, there was no way to recover from it and there was no way for them to get a mortgage. Twenty dollars to collections- that's all it took to drop by 100 points. Stay on top of your bills. If you have questions, reach out to me, Edna Wilson, your Hometown Realtor, as Hometown as Apple Pie.