Improving Your Credit

Your personal credit is an extremely important factor when it comes to applying for a home loan. You will also want to investigate the credit of anyone joining you on your home loan such as your partner. If you have been browsing Simi Valley homes for sale you will first want to take a look at how much house you can afford. The best place to find this out is by applying for a home loan and receiving a prequalification. This will also help make any of your offers stand out much stronger for the seller you are presenting them to. When applying for a home loan the lender will closely investigate your credit so it is best if you know what they will find ahead of time.
You will want to start the process by pulling your own credit report. You can do this for free once per year. Make sure that you review all three credit report bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. This will give you the opportunity to review any blemishes that the lender will find anyway and allow you the opportunity to fix them ahead of time. Remember there are five basic pieces that make up your FICO score. Your payment history accounts for 35% percent of your score making it one of the most important pieces. The easiest way to make sure that you never miss a payment is to set-up automatic payments for a least the minimum payment due, but ideally the balance due. Your credit usage accounts for 30% of your FICO score. It is important to use your credit every month so that you can build your score over time, but also in a manageable way so that you can pay it off monthly. The remaining sections account for a smaller percentage of your score including age of credit accounts (15%), credit mix (10%), and new inquiries (10%).
If you are looking for Simi Valley homes for sale but are unsure of your credit score we would be happy to walk you through the process. Many individuals are confused by the entire home loan process, and we want to assure you that you are never alone in the process. You can also regularly review your credit score yourself to make sure everything reported is accurate, just make sure that you only do soft checks so as not to hurt your own score.