How to check my score without dinging it?

[Edith]

I’d like to check my credit score toward potential home purchase, but I don’t want to make a hard pull and ding my score. Any recommendations?

[Tracy Winters]

Checking your own score is ALWAYS a soft inquiry

Whenever you check your own credit score or report (it makes no difference) it’s always considered a soft inquiry. It may appear on your credit report, but it doesn’t count in your Fico score.

If you’re looking into buying a home, you should pull your credit reports from all the 3 major credit bureaus and check them (All 3 reports are free once every 12 month. See free-government-credit-report.html for details). While credit scores matter, credit reports are far more important. If you have any unresolved negative item (e.g. collection accounts, credit card or loan defaults etc) you won’t get approved. You need to resolve these items before you apply.

While credit reports are free, scores are not. All three major credit bureaus now sell consumers Vantage scores that are on different scale than Fico and are therefore useless. Third party monitoring services use Fakko scores, which are not accurate and therefore useless as well. There is no comparing these and they are a waste of money.

Creditors use FICO. The only place you can get real FICO scores is myFICO.com. However, that may not be very handy as well because there are few versions of Fico. While you can purchase only the “Consumer” version, mortgage lenders use the “Factual” version which tends to be slightly lower than the consumer version you can access (See understanding-fico-scores.html for more information).

If you want to get a feeling as to where you’re standing, get a free score from CreditKarma.com. They offer a free credit score that is based on your TransUnion report. It’s not a “real” FICO but within 50 points or so. Good enough to give you an initial feel for your score.

Good luck

[Author]

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