For the second time in the last year the credit bureaus are making a major change in their credit reporting standards. Last week Experian announced that starting on April 16, 2018 all tax liens will be removed from consumer credit reports. And they will stop reporting all tax lien data going forward. Trans Union and … Read more
At Advantage Credit, we’ve always taken an active role in trying to shape regulation and policy that help produce sound credit underwriting decisions that will benefit both lenders and consumers. To that end, the Federal Housing Financial Agency (FHFA) announced a Request For Input (RFI) seeking feedback from interested parties regarding how Fannie Mae and … Read more
Late payments and revolving balances are the two things that can do the most damage to a credit score. Having a late payment show up on your credit report probably makes sense but can revolving balances really have as much of a negative impact as a late payment? Absolutely. Let’s look at late payments first. … Read more
Divorce, in and of itself has no bearing on your credit. However, if you have joint accounts with your ex you could be in for trouble, even if debts are listed in the divorce decree as being the responsibility of your ex spouse. As far as credit is concerned, the divorce decree really has no … Read more
Thanks to a 2015 settlement agreement between the New York Attorney General and the three credit reporting agencies, some important changes are on the way in regards to credit reporting. An additional agreement between the credit reporting agencies and another 31 state attorney generals ensure that the change will be nationwide. The changes are being … Read more
Credit reports can be very confusing to read at times. There is a lot of information to decipher, codes that may not always make sense, etc. There are some basic things to know that may help when you are looking at a credit report. While there are several different scoring models available for each bureau, … Read more
A “Rescore” is the updating of information on a credit report at the bureau level in an expedited manner. It is not credit repair and it is not a manipulation of the credit report. Eventually the changes that are made through a rescore would be reported at the bureau level by the creditor. A rescore … Read more
In this day and age everyone has been taught at least a few ways to protect their identities against theft. But what about your children’s identities? Social security numbers are issued at birth and since kids usually don’t use them until they are older, they are a prime target for identity theft. According to the … Read more
The amount of consumers that file bankruptcy each year continue to decline since new laws went into effect in 2005 tightening the requirements for a consumer to be able to file. The numbers that still do file, however, are a bit staggering. In 2016 there were 800,000 bankruptcy filings. Statistics show that 60% of bankruptcies … Read more
So you’ve found out you were one of the 143 million people who were possibly compromised by the Equifax breach. What exactly does that mean and what should you do now? What it means is that hackers stole names, addresses, social security numbers and even driver’s license information. In some cases all this information was … Read more