What Shows Up On A Credit History Search

What exactly is the credit history search that lenders do when they check your credit and what does it show. Typically, your credit will be checked whenever you apply for any sort of loan or credit, whether it be fairly obvious ones such as at the car dealership or the mortgage company as well as less obvious credit checks such as by the bank, cellphone company, or door to door salesman that you are buying your vacuum from. Credit history searches can be done by any company that applies for it, and it is a common practice before extending any kind of credit to anyone.

Also, you should know that your credit history may be a factor in other types of non financial applications such as applying to rent a home or apartment. Many landlords these days check the credit of their tenants before they will rent to them, and you can get denied if your credit is bad, even after paying an application fee, per adult that ranges between $25 to $75 a person. Your credit history is extremely important when it comes to rentals as it is almost impossible to get into one without a credit check. However, on the positive side, unless you have bad rentals on your credit report, you’ll likely be approved even if your credit score is low.

Your credit report may also be pulled to get a job. Often, credit reporting agencies track your job history, although not particularly accurately, and employers can see some of your employment history by pulling your credit report. Also, many employers believe that a person that has a poor credit history and doesn’t pay their bills will not be a reliable employee. In fact, there are studies that claim that very thing, that the percentage of unreliable employees that have low credit report scores is very high, and employers are beginning to take every step they can to hire good employees that they can depend upon.

The history of your credit reads like a financial report card. Each listing shows the name of the creditor, the amount of your loan and the date that it was opened, as well as the date of the most recent activity. Below the listing it will show each month that you have had the loan with disposition codes that signify a missed payment, closed account, a payment that was made, or the loan being paid off. This is what a creditor will see when he or she pulls your credit report from the system. Keep in mind that there are three credit bureaus and your accounts may have been reported to one, two or all three of them. This is why your score will vary between the three.

Other items that are listed on your credit besides all of the accounts that you have had open in the past, and jobs that we have previously had, are bankruptcies within the past ten years, and jobs that you may or may not have had. The job and address section of your credit report may not be very clear. Also, any inquiries you have had in the past 12 months will show up. Any accounts that haven’t had any activity in the past seven years will fall off as well, however, the seven years to drop off as a law is a myth. The bureaus will take any account that has reached that status off, unless the company in question writes in to request that the information stay on longer.