North Texas Real Estate Blog

With the recent increase in sales of Tarrant County homes and Dallas County homes, now is a great time to review your credit report to verify that all the information is correct. People that have been waiting for signs of improvement in the North Texas real estate market are beginning to make their move and begin searching for a new home or preparing their current home for sale.

If you are currently a homeowner and you’ve decided that now is the time to sell your house, you will need to decide where you are planning to move after your home sells. If you do decide you want to purchase another home, and you will be using financing for the purchase, you may want to get a copy of your credit report to check for errors that may be affecting your credit score. If you’ve been in a home for a long period of time and have not recently applied for a loan, the importance of a good credit score has never been more important since all the recent loan defaults in the real estate market. This is a great time to request a copy of your credit report from one of the three credit bureaus and verify that your credit information is correct.

If you are a first time homebuyer you may not be familiar with the fact that the better your credit score, the better interest rate you will receive from your lender. If your credit needs some improvement, you may be able to obtain a loan for a home, but you can expect to pay a higher interest rate. This will affect the sales price of the home you can qualify for. Your credit score is a numerical score based on your credit history. If you have late payments or delinquencies on your credit report and you believe them to be incorrect, you can dispute these with the credit bureau. It does require a bit of time to make corrections to your credit report and if you want to take advantage of the government tax credit, time is running out to meet the December 1, 2009 deadline.

At present, the lowest credit score that buyers can qualify for a mortgage is 620. Although your credit report does not give your actual credit score, if you find reporting errors, your credit score may be lower than it should be. Even if you aren’t planning to buy a home for another year or more, it’s a good time to check out your credit report and see if there are areas where you can improve your creditworthiness for the future. Most lenders require a higher down payment for those buyers with credit scores under 700, sometimes as high as a 20 percent down payment.
Since the real estate market is showing signs of recovery and the availability and affordability of homes is better than in recent years, take some time to review your credit report to make sure you are in the position to buy when the time is right for you.