When a lender considers approving your mortgage application, it goes something like this: First, what is your credit score? What is your credit history? How much money do you make? How much debt do you have? How much money do you have for a down payment?

Giving a large down payment may hide some of the negative credit history or a low credit score. Just get ready to pay above average interest and fees for the term of your mortgage.

Bottom line is that you have a low credit score. If you want to purchase your own home, you still need a good credit score.

In order to qualify for the lowest interest rates, you need a minimum credit score of 758, according to CNN.com

Within the last 12-18 months, the minimum score to qualify for low mortgage rates has increased. Qualifying for the best mortgage rates has always meant that you need to have a good credit score.

Obtaining the Minimum Credit Score for a Mortgage

Don’t be confused by your credit score. Simply remove bad credit information to see an improvement.

If you have derogatory information on your credit report, the “experts” say you can’t remove it. It is in their best interest that you think you have to wait 7-10 years for the bad information to disappear, in order to raise your credit score.

However with minimal effort you can obtain your report and see exactly what is there. Often there will be mistakes or errors that you can dispute before the 7-10 year period.

You can start to correct the errors by writing a dispute letter to the credit bureau. Another option is working with the original creditor to fix the mistake.

Often, an expertly worded credit dispute letter will resolve the inconsistency. Although it has been shown that investigation methods are often sloppy and error prone.

This is because they ” the credit bureaus -must spend potential profits on time and resources to investigate any dispute. The unfortunate truth is that some credit bureaus have found it more cost effective to delay or ignore your dispute altogether.

They want you to just live with the cost of having bad credit, and hope that you will give up on your dispute. This frustration causes some people to hire credit repair services to take over the dispute process.

How much Time Will it Take to Raise my Low Credit Score

A frequent concern is how long will it take to improve a low credit score. Although every persons situation is unique, if you are looking for a fairly drastic improvement, then you should expect anywhere between 6 to 12 months before you report is clean.

While this may seem like a long time, it is better than waiting 7 to 10 years for the negative information to automatically fall off your credit report. Waiting 6 to 12 months to raise your credit score is worthwhile, especially when you want to own your own home.

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