As a follow up to my post about staying on top of your credit report, I was able to get my actual credit score from one of my power team members since he has access to this type of information. The credit report, which you can get once per year for free from both Equifax and TransUnion, does not show your credit score. To get your credit score from one of the credit reporting agencies, you have to pay a nominal fee.
I didn’t bother to order my credit score because I kind of knew that it would be fairly high anyway, especially after seeing the R1s on my credit report. But my team member was able to get it anyway and he revealed to me that my credit score is currently 801, which is considered very high.
A credit score of 680 and up is acceptable in the eyes of many financial institutions and above 700 is really good. In my case, I think I was able to achieve my high rating because as outlined in my article about never paying credit card interest, I always pay my full balances each month and on time.
I also maintain a few different credit cards and keep each one active even if I charge only $10 to my backup cards every couple of months or so. Being able to pay on time on a few different sources of credit is one of the most important factors in determining credit score.
Rent To Own Programs
Unfortunately, many folks who are currently renters and want to become homeowners, cannot get approval for mortgages because their credit scores are too low. Their past credit habits of spending too much on their credit cards and/or paying balances too late have caused their credit to become tarnished.
Some others, even with decent credit scores, do not have enough of a down payment to obtain a mortgage. So such folks have been stuck as renters even if they want to become homeowners.
There are ingenius programs out there known as Rent To Own programs which help these kind of people out. These programs in fact help people with poor credit and/or insufficient funds for mortgage down payments to become homeowners within a few years while renting a home that they will eventually purchase at a predetermined price.
Instead of going through financial institutions, private investors administer Rent To Own programs for homes. You can likely find such a program near your area if this is something that would help you become a homeowner.
Since I’m now aligned with quite a few private real estate investors (and now own investment property myself), I have also decided to develop a Rent To Own program as well in order to help out folks in Canada. If this would be of interest to you or somebody you know who is currently a renter and would love to become a homeowner soon, check out my new Canadian Rent To Own Homes website.
Whatever your case might be, I hope that everyone out there takes positive steps to become proud holders of high credit scores as I hope the articles linked in this blog post will help people achieve that.
