3 Credit Hacks to Boost Your Credit Score Fast in 30 Days for Home Buying

With respect to first-time home buyers, there's always a right way and a wrong way to do everything. And in trying to improve your credit scores so that you can qualify for a home, there is a better way. So, in this video, I'm going to show you three ninja hacks that most people don't know about to help you improve your scores, whether they be something that's not qualifying yet. Let's say it's below 580 and you need to get to at least 620 or you're already around 620. We want to get you to 680 so you can get better pricing, more access to different down payment assistance programs. Whatever the case, watch it all the way through. I'm going to give you some good examples hopefully along the way. Hit the like and subscribe. Share with your friends and family. And let's kick off this rodeo right now. Hi folks, I'm Kevin Fagan. I'm the mortgage patriot on your side nestled here in the Hill Country above San Antonio, Texas. Serving all you proud Texans and all you great folks around the country. So another great one. Why? Because as I mentioned earlier, we're going to talk about how to improve your credit scores quickly. Either if you're unqualified now, we're going to take you to a state of being qualified or if you're already qualified now to take you to just a higher score altogether. That way you can get maybe access to more programs, access to down payment assistance, better complement of options at your availability. So, it never hurts to have a better score. We're going to show all that through the video. So, hit the like and subscribe if you would. It helps me really bring up my content to help educate you. after this video, go back and reference this one because this was a very good uh video I did on improving your scores as well. I go over some of the sim similar material, but not all. So, that's a that's a good uh second video if you would after this one. So, anyway, let's get into that content right now. So, for hack number one or ninja trick number one is adding your rental history or a utility or a phone bill to your credit report. Because think about this, scores are based largely upon, you know, obviously staying current with your vendors, but if you've been making payments to something like your property manager or, you know, your apartment complex, and a lot of times those people do not report to the credit bureaus. So, you have a history there. Let's say you've been living in your apartment for three years. You have a three-year history, and I'm assuming you've been paying on time, you got a good three-year history that's not being utilized or shown on your credit report. So, there's companies in America, I can give you my favorite one at the end of this, that will call up your property manager and gather back that three-year history in our example, and add it to your credit report. So, those now the trade bureaus have an additional trade line, which they didn't have, that's in your name already, that you've established great credit for. The same is true for they could do it for a water bill or electric bill or even a phone bill. So, if you have a Verizon bill, for example, you've been paying off for five years, that same company will some contact you, gather that information, add that to the credit report, and now you have an added trade line with good history. And guess what, folks? This works every time. And I mean 100% of the time, not 99% of the time, 100% of the time. And it bumps up your scores immediately, 20, 40, even maybe higher, depending on how long that history is. The longer the history, the more the bump. So, incredible way to do it, um, is attaching trade lines that weren't already on your report to your report. Now, incredible hack. Now, that's my number one go-to ninja trick for improving scores. But, there is a cost, just so you know. It might be about $80 to 90, almost $100, depending on how many people you're going to put on the on on the report. Then you might pay $8 to $10 a month worth every freaking penny. You're probably all in for about 150 bucks total. and it's going to score raise your scores right away within two to three weeks depending on the reporting cycle timeline. So that aside, now ninja trick number two, authorized users. An authorized user is simply someone that allows you to use their credit history or card in the in this case usually somebody that's you know that's related to you. It might be a family member, might be a spouse, might be a relative. But what you want to do is have them put you as an authorized user for their card. You do not need to use the card at all. All you're doing is trying to uh piggy back off of their their history. So, let's take an example. Let's let's take a your your mother or your father. They want to help you out. Your scores are 590. We got to get you to at least 620, but hopefully 640. So, we're going to move at 50 points. You call up your one of your parents and they've got a lo and behold, they've got a Bank One card, a Capital One card, whatever it is, and let's say it's 5 years old. And here's the key, they have to have low utilization on it. Meaning, they can't be maxed out on their card. That's going to hurt your scores. You want a card that's got, let's say, a credit limit of a,000, but they're maybe they're at zero balance or they're less than 30% certainly, but they're less than even maybe 10%. So, maybe they got $50 as a balance with a credit limit of a thousand. So the utilization is 5% in that example. That will help you. So all they have to do is call up the the card company say I want to allow my daughter or my son to be an authorized user on this account. And that's all it is. Doesn't cost you anything. You don't have to use the card. You can tell them hey as soon as we finish soon as I get qualified and I close on my home you can take me right off the card. But what happens is as soon as the reporting cycle hits again, you're going to that trade line of theirs is going to be on your report now and all those five years of fine history now bump up your score 15 20 maybe 30 points but depending on how long again their history is. Incredible hack absolutely legal. It's called authorized user and I'll show you how to do that. Just a quick aside before we get into the ninja trick number three and let's look at this right here. webinar.theort mortgage.com webinar.the mortgage.com. What is that? That's my Thursday evening's webinar to first-time home buyers where I take you from start to finish. And I mean start to finish. I mean pre-approval all the way to engaging a loan officer, engaging a realtor, what to do when you're under contract, how to negotiate all during those phases, what to do as we get the clear to close and you go into the title and what the documents will be presented before you to the time you get your keys. So, start to finish from pre-approval to keys, you're going to want to understand the process because it's the biggest investment of your life. So, click on that webinar.org mortgage.com. Sign up for our Thursday evening uh webinar. It lasts about 50 minutes with questions and answers after that. Might take an hour. You'll learn more than you could possibly learn. I show you real documents. I show you everything. So, it's quite the bit of education and you'll really feel comfortable and confident going forward and trying to buy your first home. So, look out for that and sign up for that if you would. I hope to see you there. Let's talk about ninja trick number three, credit hack number three, and that is the use of secured credit cards. What do they do? Well, it's not going to be quite as dynamic as the first two strategies, but it fits the role of let's say you your scores are below 600 and you can't get a new card because your scores are so low, they're not accepting you. Well, a secured card uses your own money as collateral to then extend to you credit. So, for example, I'll put a link in the description below. this company will allow you to they'll take $200 they'll put it of your money put as collateral for a car that then extends to you $200 of credit because nobody else will accept you. This is the way to start building credit. Now the thing is because the credit's short, it won't have as much impact. But here's how you use it. Listen very carefully. Use it every week for everything. Uh buy groceries, buy gas. But here's the key. Pay it off not once a month. Pay it off weekly. Every week. Get in the habit of paying it off Friday or Saturday or Sunday over the weekend. After about two months, your credit is going to improve. And it might even help. You might even have two. It doesn't hurt to even have two of these if you can afford to put up $400 as backing for two cards that are $200 each. It's a great trick and it will establish credit for you for those that can't do it otherwise. Keep that in mind. So, let me give you a couple of dos and a couple of do nots to quickly improve your credit scores so you get put yourself in a in a very good uh place of qualifying. So, number one, do do pay down your credit cards, your revolving accounts to below if you can below 10%. If you can't manage that, then the first tier is get them below 30%. So, if you have a card that's $1,000 credit limit, we want to get that balance, current balance below 300. And then if you can't afford it, if you can afford it, get it to below 100. That's below 10% usage. That moves your scores nicely. Do number two, if you can and you have a good history of, let's say a history, a card that's been five years old, $1,000 credit limit, maybe a $600 balance, call up the credit company and ask them to increase your credit limit. If they take it from a,000 to$500, then now your utilization, even though you got the same balance of 600, your utilization looks different. uh looks lower and your score will increase. So, that's a nice little trick right there. A couple of do nots. Do not close anything. Do not close a credit card that is problematic for you. Maybe it's had some collection history, what have you. It's got a large balance or even got a zero balance. Doesn't matter. Do not close it. It does not help you in the short term. It lowers your scores, believe it or not. Secondly, do not pay any installment loan to zero. Let's say you're paying on your car. It's $300 a month. You got eight more payments. You just want to try to get unless your loan officer absolutely like myself absolutely says you've got to do that to get your DTI down, your debt to income down, do not pay any dollars on an installment loan. Just keep paying it monthly as regular. So, with those four and the three major tips on top of that, you should have no problem moving your scores adequately to a point where you're uh ready to to move on to a home purchase. So, I'm Kevin Fagan. Uh here's that website once again, webinar.the mortgage.com. Sign up for that uh Thursday evening webinar. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to learn how to save money. I'm going to show you the best down payment assistance programs. I'm going to show you how to minimize your cash to close everything. So, sign up for that and I'll see you on the