… and Credit Reports

Quite often people may know their credit isn’t ‘stellar’, but when thinking about buying a home, they would like to know ahead of time just how bad (or good) it is. . . and often to their surprise, they find it’s better than they thought it was.

So, are the FREE credit score sites really free?

The answer is ‘YES’  . . .and ‘NO’.

‘NO’ if you thought  that there would be no strings attached, or with your free credit score you would also get a free copy of your credit REPORT.

The simple truth is that most of the advertisers of the free credit score sites give you only that. A free credit score.

What does it mean? How was it derived? What is the bad stuff that made it so low? That information is not free. For a copy of your report, quite often they want you to pay a fee to subscribe to their services.

For example, FreeCreditScore.com will give you your Experian score for free, but you must first provide them a credit card number  –  your credit score is free only if you call them within 7 days to cancel their automatic subscription. Otherwise, you’ll be billed $14.95/month. And trust me…. you will get a hard sell when trying to cancel.

By the way – Are you aware that there are three credit reporting bureaus? Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Not all three evaluate credit in exactly the same way, so the score from one, is not likely to be the exact same as the other two.

In researching on-line FREE credit score sites, I found only two that will provide you a truly Free Credit SCORE and a Free Credit REPORT.

https://www.Quizzle.com/ and https://www.creditkarma.com/

From both these sites you will get a detailed credit report showing what has been reported by your creditors, plus an analysis of your credit and what you can do to improve your score. Now that is useful information! And unless you want to, you don’t have to buy a subscription.

The other thing I liked about these sites is they do not ask you for your social security number in order to provide your free credit score-credit report. They verify that you are who you say you are by asking you questions from your credit file that only you would know the answers to.

If your credit scores are 640 or above, you may be able to qualify for a home loan. If lower, check out this blog on ways you can repair your credit. And for the names of lenders who’ve provided my buyers great service in the past, please feel free to contact me.