Thursday, June 09, 2005

How Shopping for a Loan Can Make It Harder To Get One

When shopping for a mortgage at LendingTree.com, I received offers from several lenders. Now my mortgage broker tells me that Web shopping lowers my credit score. Does this really happen?

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Using LendingTree.com alone should not hurt, but your score may suffer if you shop around too much. When lenders calculate your credit score--which assesses the probability that you'll repay the loan--your bill-paying history and how much debt you already have are the keys, says Craig Watts, consumer-affairs manager for Fair, Isaac, which develops credit-scoring calculations.

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But part of the score is based on how often you've authorized lenders to review your credit report. Lenders worry that too much activity means you're trying to get too much credit and may become overextended.

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Asking for a personalized quote usually triggers a look at your credit record. LendingTree.com, for example, gets a copy of your report and passes it on to potential lenders. Deborah Roth, a spokeswoman for the firm, says individual lenders usually don't request your report again. But even if they do, credit-scoring rules prevent the inquiries from having too much effect on your score. Any mortgage or auto-loan inquiry made in the past 30 days appears on your credit report but isn't included in your credit score. All inquiries made during the previous two weeks are counted as a single one for scoring purposes.

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Because of this time frame, searching on LendingTree won't affect your score nearly as much as visiting several lenders separately and asking for personalized quotes over a lengthy time period, long before you buy a house.

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"The Internet makes shopping for loans a lot easier," says Rasha Elass, an analyst with Gartner Group's e-business intelligence group. "Ninety percent of shoppers do it as window shopping. My advice to consumers is not to shop around unless you are serious about closing."

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