For those of you who were at Tuesday’s Mortgage Mania CE course in Southampton – 2 questions that came up from local Real Estate Agents about credit have been answered by Christopher Lauria, President of Innovative Business & CO NY.
WHAT DOES ACCOUNT CLOSED AT CREDIT GRANTORS REQUEST MEAN?
On your credit report, some accounts might read "account closed at grantor's" request or "closed by grantor." This means your credit card issuer, or bank for some reason, had your account closed and reported to the bureaus to have that term added to your trade line.
The listing or the fact that your creditor closed your credit card (rather than you closing it) won't hurt your credit score but may sway an approval from another creditor. However, your credit score could be affected by a closed credit card if you still have the balance on the credit card or credit cards.
If this isn't true and you requested that your account be closed. You can dispute the credit report entry. You may contact my company any time for assistance with such matters.
DOES CHECKING YOUR CREDIT REPORT HURT YOUR SCORES?
This is a common myth and please don't let it be the reason that you don't know what your credit scores are. Checking your report on your own will absolutely not hurt your credit scores In fact, you could check your report every week and it wouldn't hurt your score one bit as long as they are self disclosure. There are services that provide free credit reports but they really are not free lol, in which you can view all three credit scores that purchase your credit profile directly from the 3 Bureaus, the one main issue with this is that most of these companies base your scores on a higher tier scoring system which goes up to 950 to where banking standard industry only goes up to 850. The problem with that is when you view your scores they appear 35-55 points higher and unfortunately that causes many misconceptions. Also you may request your credit reports once a year from the 3 major bureaus, these are the most accurate reports you can receive. However when you request your 3 for free once a year directly from the bureaus, they unfortunately do not provide scores just creditor information.
The only thing you want to be careful of is using a company that doesn't get your score directly from the three credit bureaus. Using an outside source could count as an inquiry by an outsider and could hurt your score because technically, the request to the bureaus isn't being made by you, in this case it's whats called a hard inquiry and can count for a few points on each bureau especially if your scores are being shopped to different banks, which occurs mostly when purchasing an automobile, credit card applications certain bank loans etc, but you can always ask the financial manager to please not shop your credit profile to multiple banks, But if you have poor credit they do this so that they can get you financed in which case you really do not have much of a choice so let them shop your credit profile.
Now The Good News:
Inquiries have little impact on your credit score. Credit scores have been redesigned in recent years to account for the fact that many people shop for credit.
The main factors in lowering a credit score are 1) making late payments or outright default and 2) level of credit balances.
Christopher Lauria
President
Innovative Business & Co NY Inc
998 C Old Country Road Suite 293
Plainview NY 11803
Telephone: (800) 422-8350
Office: (516) 960-7759
Mobile: (646) 644-9144
Fax: (800) 356-6506
E-Mail: libc1@optonline.net
