Credit score is an important number while you apply for any kind of loan – secured or unsecured. Your creditor/lenders will decide whether or not you’re creditworthy depending upon this score. If you hurt your credit score, then it would take years to repair it. Thus, it’s a better option to protect you score rather than repairing it.

Take a look at 7 things which may affect your credit:

• Defaulting mortgage payment: If your mortgage payments are past due, it’ll badly affect your credit report. The lender will start report your late payments to the credit bureau. Late payments are considered as a negative item and it will remain on your credit report for the next 7 years. Moreover, it will also lower your credit score by some points.

• Charge off: If you haven’t paid your credit card dues or mortgage payments (especially second mortgage) for quite sometime, the lender may think that you would be unable to pay off the dues. Thus, your creditor/lender will charge off the account to a collection agency. This will have a huge impact on your credit score. Also, in future you won’t be able to secure a mortgage unless you pay off the charged off account.

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Loan modifications may or may not affect your credit score. Generally it is believed that a loan modification will have a positive impact on a borrower’s credit score. In case, if the lender has reduced the principle amount of your loan, it will also help you in reducing your debts. Also, if you pay off your debts on time after the loan modification for the next 6 to 12 months, your credit rating will start improving.

However, after the loan modification, if you’re late on your payments or start making partial payments, your credit score will get negatively affected. In addition, the lender would report the principle reduction as “debt satisfied for less than the full amount”. This will also have a negative impact on your credit score.

In certain cases, the lenders would not accept your loan modification request if you’re not delinquent on your mortgage payments. You may have to show that you are 30 days late on your payments. If the lender reports this 30 day late payment to the credit bureaus, your credit score can go down by few points.

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In a major announcement, Experian, one of the three major credit reporting bureaus, have declared that consumers will not have access to their FICO credit score. This rule will be effective from this month. Experian has also informed Fair Isaac Corp. that it is terminating its relationship with myFICO.com which sells FICO credit scores directly to consumers.

Thus, from now onwards Experian customers will not be able to check out their FICO scores which the lenders are using while determining their credit level. Consumers can take a look at their Experian FICO score by contacting their lenders. However, consumers can still obtain their FICO scores from Equifax or TransUnion.

Lenders have always preferred using the Fair Isaac Corp’s technology to make credit decisions each year. A mathematical formula is applied in order to decide a consumer’s credit history. The factors taken into consideration are more or less the same for all the three credit bureaus which helps them produce a 3 digit score. This score helps the lenders to judge a person’s likelihood of repaying the debt.

A lot of people are of the opinion that this decision of Experian is the result of a fall out between Experian and Fair Isaac. The latter had also filed a lawsuit against Experian, Equifax and TransUnion in 2006 as they have developed a different credit score model called VantageScore. However, whatever be the reason for such a decision, it will now become difficult for the consumers to know what most lenders are using to grade them as they will not have a direct access to Experian’s score.