No FICO Scores!

A client recently came to TKG because he had no FICO scores. Armed with a great history of income and a 30% down payment, he still could not get his mortgage approved. So how did he come to have no FICO scores?

Back in 2002, my client realized he had some derogatory reporting on his credit reports due to late payments. A recent divorce and a move created a chaotic time during which he never updated his creditors with his new contact information. While he eventually chased down all the creditors with his updated information, the process of fixing the mistakes turned out to be so frustrating that he decided to pay off all of his creditors and eliminate all of his credit cards. So when he went to apply for a mortgage and his broker pulled his credit report, there was no score!

With the help of the Kelly Group, it took only three months to rehabilitate my client’s score. In that time, we taught him how to build new credit and also we addressed items reporting with negative history on his credit report. We were able to negotiate over half of the derogatory late payments off of his report completely. He was then able to build new credit by securing two new credit cards in his name and becoming an authorized user on his mother’s credit card accounts.

When the mortgage broker re-pulled his credit, he had gone from NO FICO score at all, to a 722 middle score. He is now signing contracts on a new condo and is happy he had a place to turn to learn more about his credit. He reminds me that no matter how frustrating it can be dealing with creditors, using credit is necessary to maintain a credit score and obtain new loans.