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When shopping for a Raleigh North Carolina mortgage, you will definitely want to have your credit score checked at least six months in advance of making an offer on your future home. Your credit score can have a huge impact on your Raleigh North Carolina mortgage and can potentially save you tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of your loan.
If you have checked your credit score and it shows that your score is less than 550, you can expect your interest rate for your Raleigh North Carolina mortgage to be several percentage points higher than if you had a higher score. This will result in having to pay hundreds more every month on your Raleigh North Carolina mortgage.
In order to raise your credit score the first thing you will need to do is dispute any erroneous charges on your report. For example, if there appears to be a late payment on the report that you feel wasn’t late, then you can dispute it. Also, if you have a good reason why a payment was late you may be able to attach that reason to your credit report. While this will not improve your actual credit score, it will show lenders why that ding on your credit is there.
There are some companies that claim they can improve your credit score quickly which would result in a better interest rate for a Raleigh North Carolina mortgage. But beware; many of these credit repair companies are scams. They will charge you lots of fees for things that you can do for free yourself. They may also try to engage you in illegal activity, such as getting you to lie about your credit score on loan applications.
Before shopping for a Raleigh North Carolina mortgage, make sure that your credit report is error free and that there have not been any changes to it made in the last few months. Another good point to be made is that obtaining a Raleigh North Carolina mortgage and making your payments on time will also cause your credit score to improve.