Boost Your Credit Score and Buy a Home Faster in 2023!

 If you're looking to improve your credit score and buy a home in 2023, you've come to the right place. In this article, we'll share tips and tricks from Tulsa's top mortgage lender and credit repair specialist, Mike David, with the Oklahoma Mortgage Group. 

First, it helps to understand what makes up your credit score. 

FICO scores are based on five categories:

1.      Payment history –35% of a borrower’s FICO score; A long history of on time payments is good for your credit rating and lenders like to see clients using multiple sources of credit (revolving credit and installment loans) with a good payment history.

2.      Amounts owed – 30% of your FICO score; The less debt you have the greater your chances of getting credit.

3.      Length of credit history – 15% of your FICO score; A long track record or responsible credit use is good for your credit rating.

4.      Credit mix - 10% of your FICO score; variety shows a lender that the borrower has experience using multiple sources of credit.

5.      New credit – 10% of your FICO score; Opening a bunch of new credit cards in a short amount of time is not good for your credit score.

 

Here are our top 5 ways to BOOST your credit score:

1.      Call each of your credit cards and ask for a credit line increase. Asking your credit card issuer to increase your credit limit can not only boost your buying
power, but also lower your credit utilization, which could help your credit scores. 

2.      If you have a close family member or friend with good credit, get added to their card as an authorized signer. You do not need the card physically.

·        It’s the #1 number way to start reporting good revolving credit.  It’s a simple process and whoever is adding you as an authorize signer will simply have to call their credit company to get started. Ask someone who uses a small portion of their credit card limit and has a clean payment history on an account that's been open for a long time. Make sure the card issuer reports authorized users to the credit bureaus: If your authorized user status doesn't show up on your credit reports, it won’t help your score.

3.      Sign up for Experian boost.  https://www.experian.com/consumer-products/score-boost.html

•        Get credit for bills like your phone, utilities, and popular streaming services.

•        Access your free Experian credit report & FICO Score

•        Includes Experian credit monitoring and alerts.

4. If there are collection items reporting on your credit report, see about getting a good faith deletion and into some type of payment plan or paying it completely.

•        Please note it is crucial that these merchants will delete items off your credit before paying off these items. A good faith deletion is a written correspondence that asks creditors to remove negative remarks from your credit reports.

5. Get a secured credit card - this will report to all three credit agencies.

•        Sign up for credit.ai. This is a secured credit card and there are no fees. You can put $10 or up to $10,000 on this credit card but it’s always going to report a $1500 line of credit to all three credit bureaus. There is no hard inquiry to see if you qualify. Go to https://cred.ai/ to sign up.

 

 

And once you’ve done these tips, monitor your credit score! Here are our favorite credit monitoring systems:

·        Experian.com (free)

·        Credit Karma (free)

·        MyCreditScore.com (paid)

 

If you want free mortgage advice, you can apply on our website at www.OklahomaMortgageGroup.com

We always start with a “soft pull” on your credit, so no hard hits to affect or pull down your credit score.  If needed, we will build you a credit game plan and let you know exactly what you need to do and how long the game plan will take!  This is completely free of charge. You can go here to book a phone chat with me if you have questions, or feel free to call/text or email anytime.