Have you decided that this is the year that you will improve your credit score and get in on your own piece of Atlanta real estate?

If so, start with some facts about your credit score from the Equifax Finance experts in their newest article,

“Eight Things You Don’t Know About Your Credit Score.”

The first four facts in the article include:

1. Credit reporting agencies (the three national credit reporting agencies are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) do not determine your risk as a borrower; they simply report your credit history and determine and report your credit score. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion do not determine whether or not you qualify for a loan or credit card or what conditions and interest rates you get offered by lenders. The agencies are sent information about your credit activity from your lenders and creditors and also collect financial information from public records.
2. You have multiple credit scores. You don’t have just one score, there are several credit scoring models that lenders use to come up with a credit score. Credit scores are intended to predict your credit risk, and lenders may use scores that are more commonly used within their specific industry or may use blended scores from all three agencies. It is likely (though not guaranteed) that if you have a good credit score with one scoring model, you’ll have a good score with other models.
3. There are many other reasons why your credit scores may be different among agencies. If you order your credit score at different points in time (even just a few weeks or months apart), your score could be slightly different due to changes made to your existing accounts and/or new accounts opened. Also, not all credit reporting agencies receive the same information from lenders and creditors. Some creditors only report data to one agency, not all three. However, if there are inaccuracies in your credit report, you should file a dispute with the agency and contact the creditor; errors in your report could be a sign of identity theft.
4. Personal information, like your age, race, religion, gender and marital status, are not used to calculate your credit score and cannot be considered by lenders when evaluating your credit application. Financial information like your payment history, your debt-to-credit ratio, and the length of your credit history are used to calculate your score.

Get the next four facts in the full article on the Equifax Finance blog, where you can find lots more helpful articles on credit, credit scores, identity theft,

insurance, retirement and more.