Can My Bad Credit Be Changed ?
hello smart folks, eager to get into real estate, finding big snags with qualifying for a mortgage with my hideous credit.. any hope? any way to kiss the bad credit past goodbye? or do i really have to wait years??? thank you so much.... 
I am still a newbie but I know you can begin by birddogging, owner finanicing (you rent out property), and rehabbing (using hard money lenders). Those things don't require credit. Please check those specific forums for more info.
Do you need cash to buy real estate? No
Do you need credit to buy real estate? No
Should you get your credit straight? Yes
But dont let it get in your way, stop you, or become your excuse....
There are too many ways to do it...
Dont loose hope!!! Repairing your credit is not easy but it could be done. Depending on what you have on your credit will determine how long it will take you to repair it. Do you have BK's or Repossessions? The 1st thing most people need to do before attempting to repair their credit is to repair their spending habits and thier paying habits. You can check the forums here on TCI and you will find all the information, for free, explaining how to repair your credit. The biggest mistake that most folks make when they attempt to repair thier credit is that they simply do not follow through and eventualy give up. Kinda like lifting wieghts, working out and loosing wieght!!! Most will start excited, but once the pain settles in they take a week off.
I repaired my credit over 6 years ago and added 220 points to my credit score. It took me 18 months.
Good luck!!
Repoman
I removed 22 negative credit items from my credit report in about 1 year. It was time consuming. It is all about an effective letter writing campaign and negotiatiions. IT is much like real estate. It is a people business. Most people don't have the time to fix their credit completely on their own. I would go to ****Must Reach Senior Investor status before posting URL's*** and read all the posts about credit repair. This is a free website and the info is incredible. To speed up the process, I would read the FTC rulings, such as the Fair Credit Reporting act and the Fair Debt Collections practices Act. This will bring you up to speed and give you a lot of knowledge. I would also use a pay service for my disptue process. They usually cost anywhere from 30 to 75 dollars to sign up with and about 30-50 dollars a month there after. If you would like my to email you a name of a company, you can email me. I dont want to advertise on forum.
Learn how to buy sub to make the sellers payments document timely payments and see what the mortgage guy thinks of that.
No you don't need good credit to buy real estate, but it can help.
Straightening out your credit does take time and effort, but it is well worth it -- employers pull credit sometimes to see if they want to hire you and now even insurance companies are using your score to determine your rate so it's not a bad idea to clean it up.
A few words of advice...
1) Get a copy of all three credit reports from Transunion, Experien and Equifax. If you have been turned down for credit, you are allowed free copies. If you want your score, you have to pay. Watch out for "free credit report" offers. The more times your credit is pulled it puts a ding on your report -- by contacting the bureaus directly, no dings. Later you may want to get your credit score and go through a simulator which is offered through the bureaus to see how you can improve your score, but save your money and do this later.
2) Dispute any incorrect or negative information on your report with each of the credit bureas. If the creditor can't verify the information within 30 days they have to take it off. One trick -- try this around the Christmas/New Years holiday. Most people are on vacation or are just too lazy to verify the information and what information does not get verified within the 30 days comes off your report. Keep track of all the names, dates and everyone you speak with regarding the disputes.
4) Contact all the companies reporting the negative information. Again keep names, dates and times and NOTES. Tell them that you'd like to buy your first home and you'd really appreciate their help in removing the late payments or whatever from your report. Promise you'll be good with all future payments and generally if you make enough phone calls and are nice, you'll find someone willing to give you a break and remove the derogatory information. Most importantly, have them put it in WRITING. Have them send an update to all three agencies and give YOU a letter for your files. Even if someone says they'll take care of it, get it in WRITING and you'll be fine. If you get someone that is not coorporative, keep calling until you find someone who is. I've had extremely negative information removed simply because the person knew I wouldn't give up until it was off my report.
5) Maybe this should be 1) BUT Pay all your creditors on time. Even the worse credit histories can be rebuilt with on-time payments.
6) There are some other advance techniques to manipulate your scores which I will go into later...
Start with the big stuff first and work down from there.
If you have any specific questions on an item you'd like to disput on your credit report feel free to contact me.
Hope this helps! Good luck
<IMG SRC="images/forum/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif"> [ Edited by HouseHuntersUSA on Date 10/14/2003 ]
Creditinfocenter can be helpful for this stuff. Creditcourt if you like more extreme measures.