Credit Clean-up & Home Buying

[xapooh]

Good evening, just wanted to share how cleaning your report after ch. 7 is very valuable. I wrote a thread last month about credit scores and mine were very low. 478, 481 & 551 All three were checked on 02/08/06. I applied to myfico.com to moniter my accounts. I disputed a few items and paid off two judgments and a couple of smaller items that were not added to my ch. 7. That has increased my scores to almost a 620. So there is hope after bk. I will be purchasing my first home this summer with an interest rate in the ballpark figure of 6.25%.
TO ALL KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

[StaciMM]

Out of curiosity, were the debts (that you just paid off) after your BK, or was there some other reason that they were not discharged?

[xapooh]

There were two judgments that I had that were not included in my bk and as stated in an earlier post two c/c's that were retained after the filing. I had lost my job so therefore my payments had fallen behind. One is current and the other is paid off. With my Transunion report I had about 7 accounts that should have shown included in BK but have been disputed and they have deleted them off my file completely. So it is really like I have a clean slate.
Also a question- I had an account on my file from a bank that I was not aware of and when I called the collection agency they settled w/ me for a smaller amount and was to update w/ the bureaus that it was paid in full instead they marked it as included in bk. Should I make them correct it and mark it as paid in full? Shouldn't that make a huge difference in how it looks for me?

[StaciMM]

A paid collection vs. settled collection really is no difference, as far as I know. If you have it in writing that it was supposed to be 'paid in full' and they're reporting differently, perhaps you can write to them and ask them to remove the false info.

[xapooh]

Well it says included in BK which it was not. It should say paid in full or settled in full. That's were the dilemna is.

[StaciMM]

A derogatory is a derogatory... If the date of last activity is wrong, that could have an impact on score. (A derogatory recently is more harmful than one a year ago.)

BUT-that doesn't mean you hae to put up with bad reporting. If its reported wrong, you want it removed from your report. The fewer negative entries, the better. And they're not supposed to report false info.