Inquiries are where potential creditors, either authorized or not authorized by you, look at your credit profile to see if you are worthy to extend credit to.
When you apply for credit the lender will either do a hard pull or soft pull from either all three credit bureaus or just one.
Each inquiry can stay on your report for up to two years and may not impact your credit score immediately, but many hard pulls in a short period can drop your score a little bit.
A soft pull can be when you look at your own report through one of the services we spoke about already. It can also come from companies you already have a relationship with that wants to see if they want to extend you more credit or a better rate. Soft pulls do not affect your credit score like hard pulls.
Several hard pulls, however, in a short period of time can drop your score from 5 to 10 points within a credit reporting cycle. But in general, the number of hard inquiries on your credit report isn’t a major factor in your score. The scoring model is still primarily focused on payment history, credit utilization, total debt, length of credit, and mix of credit.
Tip: You can print out a recent copy of your credit report and let the loan officer review it in advance to avoid a hard pull on your credit. Many times I either have my mortgage and business loan clients send me their recent credit report so I can review it for their score and payment history. From that I can easily determine in advance if they will be qualified for a loan and I also avoided putting a hard pull on their report.
Tip: You can have a credit freeze on your credit profile with each bureau so that no lender or company can get access to your credit without you being contacted first. So for example, if you apply for an auto loan with Satander Bank and they want to do a hard pull on your credit, when they see the note on the bureaus that you have a credit freeze they have to contact you on the phone number supplied and you will personally have to authorize them to have the OK to access your credit profile.
Not only does this avoid unwanted hard pulls, this also protects you from any potential identity theft.
Tip: You can delete past unwanted inquiries off of your credit report AND quickly boost your score by using an identity theft affidavit and/or submitting inaccurate dispute letters to all three credit bureaus. You can have your credit scores boosted as high as 30 points in as quickly as two weeks with these letters.
In the letters you state that you have unauthorized inquiries on your credit report in a short period of time. State one or all three of these reasons:
You did not approve it
You had no knowledge of it
Inquiries exceeded expectations
The credit bureaus will review and delete those inquiries.
Carl Agard is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of Boss XL Magazine and the Author of the Book "Financially Surviving COVID19 (Deleting Derogatory Credit)"
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