When I came across this article I had to share it. I also have to laugh – when my husband and I bought our first home and our credit was run – it came back that I was deceased!!!! What really made me laugh though was that all my payments – from the grave – were on time! Since you cannot get a mortgage if you are not breathing, I called my bank and corrected their error; within a month my credit report stated I was alive again. Sadly, we went through this again when we bought a car a few years later. This time my husband wad deceased. Instead of friendly help from our credit union, they hung up the phone and said they couldn’t help us. So my husband went to a notary who certified that the man before him, was alive and well and with that notarized document we were able to correct his credit report. Thankfully the dealership wasn’t too concerned and we bought the car before the correction – nonetheless – the moral of the story here… Check your credit report YEARLY! You can do so for free on sites like www.annualcreditreport.com , and monitoring it yearly will keep surprises to a minimum when trying to buy a home! Enjoy this article from the Daily News…
25% of Consumers Have Errors on Credit Report
Consumers need to be extra vigilant about checking for any errors on their credit reports, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
One in four Americans report they’ve found an error on their credit report, according to a study conducted by the FTC, which analyzed 1,001 consumers’ credit reports from the three major agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Researchers helped the consumers spot potential errors on their reports.
Five percent of the consumers found such large errors on their report that they could have gotten stuck paying more for mortgages or other financial products, if they hadn’t taken steps to correct it before applying, according to the study.
Twenty percent of the credit reports studied that were found to have errors in it were ultimately corrected after the consumer took steps to dispute it, which resulted in about 10 percent of consumers receiving a higher credit score, according to the study.
Consumers are entitled to receive a free copy of their credit report each year from the three reporting agencies.
Source: “Study: 1 In 4 Consumers Had Error In Credit Report,” The Associated Press (Feb. 11, 2013)
I Read this article at: http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2013/02/12/25-consumers-have-errors-credit-report?om_rid=AACmlZ&om_mid=_BRGpXlB8w0qair&om_ntype=RMODaily
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