In the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal was the article All Credit Scores Aren’t the Same which discussed how there is no consistency among the credit reporting bureaus at how they score consumers credit.  Most people assume you actually have only one credit score, and that is absolutely untrue!

There are actually three major credit bureaus, Experian Group, Trans Union and Equifax and all evaluate your credit history through different lenses.  For a second layer of confusion, each of the credit bureaus will assign you a different score depending on what sort of financing your trying to get.  Even with your FICO score, there isn’t consistency, because when the Fair Isaac Corp. updates its scores for your credit worthiness, not all lenders will adopt them.

Consumers now are getting copies of their credit reports online, through various companies to evaluate their scores before going out to purchase a home or financing a car.  Much to their surprise even the scores are inconsistent for the same person on the same day from the same company, credit scores can and will vary!  This means that if you’re planning on shopping for a loan you should use your ‘consumer’ credit report as more of a checkup of your credit worthiness than an actual indicator of your credit score.

I generally recommend to my clients that because the lenders will be looking at their tri-merge FICO score,  at the beginning of their home search we get those numbers and make sure there are no surprises, and we know exactly what scores we will be working with!

Jacquie Cliff -  Your Lynnwood Washington Real Estate Expert!