If you are planning your Atlanta real estate purchase, you’ve likely pulled a copy of your credit report or been told your score from your lender during the mortgage application process. If during the process, your score has dropped, you’re probably (understandably so) concerned about what could have caused the change. The credit experts at Equifax have posted a list of five common reasons why your credit score could have fallen in the recent article, “

Five Reasons Your Credit Score Could Drop” on the Equifax Finance blog.

The authors explain that there are certain actions that can negatively impact your score, including:

Missed payments – Late or missed payments, even just one, can cause your score to fall. Your payment history makes up the largest percentage of your credit score (35 percent with many scoring models). Just how much a missed payment can lower your score depends on how recently you’ve missed a payment and the amount and frequency of missed payments. Your score could be more negatively impacted with bills that have been unpaid for a long time and recent late payments. People with higher credit scores could be more negatively impacted than those with lower scores to start off with.

An account was sent to collections – If an account has been sent to collections it will continue to negatively impact your score. Just like with late or missed payments, you could be more significantly impacted if you had a higher score before the account was sent to collections. An account in collections may stay on your credit report for up to seven and a half years from when the account was first past due.

There are three more explanations for why a credit score, which you can get from www.annualcreditreport.com, could have fallen in the full article. Go to the Equifax Finance blog to find out what they are and get more information about credit and credit scores, as well as other personal finance topics from insurance to retirement to savings and more.