Will Aggressive Mortgage-Shopping Affect Your Credit?
When home buyers go shopping for mortgages, they may check out one lender, or perhaps five or six. If buyers go online to shop for a mortgage, they could end up at some sites that offer loans from more than 100 lenders.
With credit scores sensi tive to the number of times a potential creditor "pulls" a copy of your credit report, many buyers are concerned they will unintentionally lower their credit score simply by shopping around for the best deal.
That's because legitimate lenders can't give you an accurate quote without knowing exactly what your credit looks like.
The good news is, while credit histories record each time someone checks your credit history, your credit score supposedly ignores the pulls by prospective mortgag e lenders as long as you're doing your shopping within a fairly small window of time, say 30 days.
As the math behind credit scoring becomes more sophisticated, the window of shopping time will get bigger, analysts predict. Perhaps so big that time won't be a factor when it comes to shopping for the right home loan.
