Reading Your Credit Report

Reading Your Credit Report

Understanding your credit report and the information contained within that report is critical to being able to ensure that the info reported is correct. Because there are three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion), in order to do a thorough investigation of your credit, you must request information from all three sources. With that in mind, in order to dispute information reported to your credit report, you must send dispute letters to each of the three agencies. Dunwoody Mortgage Services uses a tri-merged credit file which pulls data from all three agencies and puts the information in one easy to ready (ok, kind of easy to read) format.

Here is an example of two credit lines from a tri-merged credit file:

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ACCOUNT NAME/NUMBER (SOURCES) Past due Last
OPEN HIGH Payment Balance MOP Status Rptd 30 60 90+ MR Dlq

1. BANK OF XYZ / 1845324123XXX   (EFX-1843BB1123, XPN, TUC)
    05-02          23800       350       19842      I-1 CURRENT  09-04       01 00 00   30      02-04
    Hist: 09-04 111111121111111111111111111111
    Ctgy:   AUTO LOAN

2. ABC BANK/ 1908654321XXX   (EFX-R12323C19, XPN, TUC)
    05-02          5000         45         1280      R-1 CURRENT  10-04       00 00 00   30
    Hist: 10-04 111111111111111111111111111111
    Ctgy:   CREDIT CARD

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ACCOUNT NAME/NUMBER = last digits of your account number are deleted for your protection

SOURES = defines which credit bureau is reporting the information
EQX = Equifax; XPN = Experian; TUC = Trans Union

OPEN = date opened

HIGH = high credit available

Payment = current monthly payment

Balance = current outstanding balance

MOP = I = Installment; R = Revolving

Rptd = last date information was reported

Past Due = number of times the account has been 30,60 or 90 days past due

Last Dlq = last delinquency; the date the last time the account was past due

HIST = account history; 1 - good payment; 2 - late payment; 9 - account past due
each number in the history represents one month's payment

Ctgy = account category/description of account type

For information about credit scoring, click here.

For a sample credit dispute letter, click here.

For more credit info and contact information to the three credit bureaus, click here.