Having better credit is important on many levels in our daily lives – but it also greatly impacts how much you can qualify for in a mortgage. Mortgage lenders look at the past several years when evaluating your application – and much of it depends on your credit. Working on your credit can be the most important factor in getting a mortgage – so we’ve rounded up some tips to help you get better credit.
Tips to Better Credit before your Mortgage:
- Pay your bills. It may seem like the simplest step, but it’s a big one. Make sure your bills are paid on time – lenders look for consecutive, consistent on-time payments.
- No credit is NOT good credit. Many people try to get rid of all their credit cards – but that makes you a ghost to mortgage lenders. Keep a good line of credit. Don’t open a bunch of cards at once, but don’t close them all either. You need to have a consistent payment history that lenders can look at and evaluate.
- Don’t use all that’s available to you. Aim to use only 30% or less of the credit that’s available to you. Keep your debt-to-income ratio in mind. This is what lenders use to evaluate your mortgage qualification.
- Protect your social security. Every time someone pulls your social security number, it pings your credit and drops your score. This includes all of those department store cards.
- Become an authorized user. If you have bad credit and someone with good credit is willing to put you on their card as an authorized user, that can dramatically help your credit. Make sure you trust them and that they have established credit and make payments on time before you sign up. Often young people use this with their parents to help establish their credit, and it works very well.
You can always get better credit, so we hope you found these tips enabling! And if you have questions or think you’re ready to apply for a mortgage for your dream house, give us a call! We’re a mortgage company that thinks like you do. And we’re more than willing to help.
Best,
Audrey
The Christian Mortgage Mom
