Foreclosure Impact On Credit & How To Get a Foreclosure Off of Your Credit Report
Foreclosure impact on credit can be significant, especially if your credit report shows multiple missed payments on a property prior to banks and lenders officially starting foreclosure proceedings. As to how to get a foreclosure off your credit report, this isn’t a possibility. Moreover, rather than investing time and energy in trying to find out how to remove foreclosure from credit report files, what people should be doing is taking immediate steps to start rebuilding their credit.
Foreclosure Impact On Credit
A foreclosure itself will usually wipe at least 150 points off your credit report. However, it is important to realize that any missed mortgage payments prior to foreclosure will also have impacted your credit. This being the case, it is worth checking your credit file yourself to see exactly how adversely a recent foreclosure might have affected your credit score. Next, stop applying for any and all kinds of credit. Few, if any lenders will be prepared to extend a line of credit to you if you have just been foreclosed upon. Worse, while foreclosure impact on credit is itself significant, any credit application which you submit immediately afterwards will likely lead to further credit score damaging hard inquiries on your credit file itself.
As a rule, it is best practice in this case to wait at least three years after a foreclosure before applying for any new kind of credit. Meanwhile, you should use these three years to steadily rebuild your credit by paying your bills on time and attempting to cut down your remaining debts as much as possible.
How Long Is A Foreclosure On Your Credit Report?
Like most other kinds of default, foreclosure impact on credit will usually last for seven years. After seven years a foreclosure will be removed from your credit file, and if not you will be able to petition credit bureaus directly for a foreclosure to be removed. However, if you demonstrate sound financial management after a foreclosure and work to rebuild your credit, a foreclosure will have less of an impact on your credit even in the years prior to the seven year deadline when it must be legally removed.