Nov
30
Understanding Credit Score Ratings
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It is important to improve or protect your credit scores. To do this you have to have some knowledge of where this number comes from. It is a complex system that is used to determine a persons credit scores. But it is helpful to try to understand it.
How Your Score Is Composed
Many factors go into to composing your credit score. Credit companies review your entire financial history, looking at what debts you have had and your record of payment. They look at the amount of debt you have. Having a lot of debt will bring your credit scores down. They also look at how much credit history you actually have. If you are just beginning to build your credit you will have a lower score until they have more information to evaluate.
Two More Important Factors for Your Score
Credit companies also want to see how much credit you are applying for. If you have filled out a number of credit card applications this will reflect poorly on your credit report. Also having a lot of outstanding debt with large balances and/or high rates of interests will bring your credit scores down.
Do You Have an Excellent Credit Score?
En excellent credit score is anything above 700. With an excellent credit score you will be offered the lowest interest rates possible for any loan you apply for. A rating of 650, while not excellent, is not a bad score. You would want to improve it at all possible. If your score is between 450 and 650 this is considered a low credit score and you really need to try to improve it. More than likely you will not be able to obtain an unsecured loan. All loans that you apply for will require some sort of collateral. If your scores are below 450 it will be almost impossible for you to obtain any type of loan or credit. You will need to seek the help of a financial counselor and begin to work to improve your credit score.
Get the Help You Need
Credit counseling is readily available free of charge to any who desire to better their credit scores. They educate you on what you need to do to have a better credit rating and make wise decisions so as to keep your credit rating high. This will be a big help to you in putting yourself in a better financial situation and maintaining it.
Nov
26
Bankruptcy and Clearing up Your Credit
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There are ways to repair your credit after a bankruptcy. Although these systems will not help immediately, they can be used to help repair your credit over time. Taking the needed steps to eliminate the bankruptcy record from your report or to improve your credit after a bankruptcy can place you on the right path to prepare your credit report and score for the future.
There are steps you can take after bankruptcy to fix your credit file.
Any derogatory accounts that were discharged during bankruptcy will appear as either “BK Liq Reo” or “Charge-off.” The bankruptcy will itself appear under the public record section as a Ch. 7 or Ch. 13.
There is really just one way to eliminate a bankruptcy completely from your credit record and that is to deal with the credit bureaus directly. There is almost always some kind of problem in the bankruptcy record since it was written by a human being.
Look closely on your credit report for any mistake the entry clerk made when adding up all of the bankruptcy accounts. They often round the number to the next dollar amount and this is technically not the actual number. Therefore, you could challenge this and in a lot of cases the bankruptcy will be removed.
Often, bankruptcies are easier to remove than other entries on your credit file. This is because bankruptcy files have a lot of information, so the possibility of human error is extremely high as items are usually entered by busy or overworked court employees.
Working with a municipal office is quite different from working with private subscribers. Getting the government to cooperate will make it hard for the credit bureau to reply to your dispute letter within the selected time, and the government’s bureaucracy can work in your favor.
Remember to send your letter of dispute directly to the credit reporting companies, not to the court that holds the bankruptcy file. The bureaus must correct any inaccuracy within a reasonable time frame or remove it from your credit file. It is very easy to find some kind of inaccurate information in a bankruptcy file. Use this to your advantage.
A bankruptcy is not a death sentence for your credit life, and often it is much less complex to erase a bankruptcy record then a bunch of small miscellaneous accounts on your credit report. Examine the bankruptcy records thoroughly, find a mistake, then file a dispute to have it removed from your report, so that you can start building your credit again.
Nov
26
You have to build a system for true success in Real Estate
Filed Under Foreclosures | Leave a Comment
When you decide that you truly want to be successful in real estate investing and get into it full time, or even if you want to be really good at it part time, then you have to build systems. Systems for everything.
Here are some of the systems that you need to have in place: 1. Lead generation (for buying houses and finding buyers for your deals); 2. Lead processing (a system to handle the leads once you get them); 3. Closing system. The system to handle your buyers is the most important of them all.
You have to have a system set up that attracts buyers to you looking for the kind of deals you have. It must be able to whittle them down. Meaning the system should separate tire kickers from true buyers, so that you don’t have to talk to everyone who shows a little interest. Without this system you will not sell a lot of properties and you will waste a huge amount of time.
Make sure to build these systems. Take the time to do it. I know most investors are too busy trying to do deals. The problem is they never take the time to build the systems and, therefore, they never seem to get to the point they want to be at as an investor.
Build the system and it will help your business grow. The time you spend doing it is well worth it, I guarantee it!
Nov
24
Let’s look at the situation where you are looking at a REO listed at 25k and they have just come down from 29k. The bank most likely did not really look at it because it isn’t worth that much. The house is in bad condition and would have to be gutted to rehab; the only good part of the house is the structure. You don’t want to rehab it yourself but you would like to make a low ball offer on it to flip it.
You would not be interested otherwise, but you don’t want to let this property go just yet. The interesting part is a realtor who listed it didn’t put a sign in the yard. No one knows the house is even available. Besides, sales comparables are 45-106k after rehab.
Why there is no sign in the yard on the REO listed for sale? For one of two reasons. First, the realtor could be just lazy.
Second reason is if a realtor knows what he is doing, it means he has investors or friends he is holding the house for. They may hope no one notices the property and they will get a sure deal selling it to somebody who buys from them all the time and closes all the time. Sometimes they need it to get to a certain price range in order for their buyer to pick it up.
Well, it happens all the time, and quite frankly that is just business and building relationships. You eventually want to be that person. This kind of relationships is the reason one has a success in real estate business. They are not hard to build but they do take a little skill.