The Ultimate Pre-Approval Cheat Sheet Part 1: How Credit Scores Are Affected

Man, when I (Josh) first started to attempt to wrap my head around this thing called credit and how much it mattered when trying to get all ducks in a row to buy a home, it was like when I was in the 7th Grade and got shown my first heart diagram.  There were all these foreign terms and parts on that sheet of paper and I remember asking myself: “How am I supposed to memorize this in a few weeks?!”  But luckily, I had an amazing science teacher who walked us through step by step and in those few weeks, we were able to master that heart diagram like it was nothing.  

Along with our amazing knowledgeable lending partner Allan Salter, we hope to help you guys master credit (along with every other piece we are going to touch on in this series) as well so you guys can eventually get ready to buy a home the best way possible.  

Starting with the down and dirty and without making it too confusing, your credit score is pretty much the adult version of a report card…Just replace homework assignments, tests, and projects with paying handling monthly bills and obligations timely.  In a perfect world we all would be able to do this but unfortunately life happens, and it is very possible to be in a situation where credit might need some attention.  It’s very easy to do things like miss payments or lose track of how much credit limit we’re spending.  We also could be doing things that we might think is helping our credit score but instead it might be hurting it, and that’s where more knowledge and education is more power.  

All in all, credit, once all the unknowns about it become known, it ends up being not as scary as it might seem at first.  We can attest that Allan has helped many of our clients not only get pre-approved for homes but has helped take a look at those clients’ credit pictures and have provided some great tips.  If you or anybody you know might have credit or pre-approval questions, share this with them or get in touch with us. 

We sat down with Allan recently and he helped shed some light on how exactly credit scores can be affected. You can check it out in its entirety below: