Bad Credit: How Do Inquiries Affect My Chances?

Bad Credit is a common problem among Americans and not everybody knows what causes it. Actually, there is no specific cause for bad credit but several variables can affect your credit negatively while few can affect it positively. Many people ignore that certain credit inquiries can affect your credit score negatively and thus you should try to avoid them at all cost.

But how do inquiries affect your chances of getting approved for finance? The answer to this question is not that complicated. But first, you need to be able to differentiate between diverse kinds of credit inquiries as not all of them affect credit score negatively. Only then you’ll be able to know which inquires to avoid and how to avoid too many of them if they are needed.

Soft Credit Inquiries – Hard Credit Inquiries

When a credit pull is made on your credit report, the reason why it was made will determine whether in the eyes of other lenders, it affects your credit negatively or not. Soft credit pulls which do not affect your credit score negatively are those credit pulls that some lenders and other companies make before screening who to offer certain goods or services. The credit pulls are made on their behalf and without your intervention. The same goes to the credit pulls that are made in order to monitor your credit.

Hard Credit inquiries on the other hand do affect your credit score negatively. However, these credit pulls can’t be made without your consent and thus, you are responsible for avoiding them. Hard credit pulls are the ones made by lenders or other companies offering goods or services by your request. This happens because you are authorizing them to pull your credit report in order to analyze whether they can approve you for a financial product or another kind of product that you desire.

The Amount And Time-Span Issues

An important factor is the amount of credit pulls that you have on your credit report. A single credit inquiry, even if it’s a hard one, won’t affect your credit that much. But a fair amount of credit pulls altogether will affect your credit score negatively making it drop significantly. Thus, you should make sure to decide which financial product you want and from which lender prior to applying and avoid multiple bad credit loan applications.

Another issue to be taken into account is the time-span. It’s not the same to have twenty credit inquiries within a couple of days than along a two year period of time. Thus, if you get declined for the bad credit loan you applied for, you should better wait some time, try to recover your credit score and fix anything that prevented you from obtaining your bad credit loan and only then apply again. Otherwise, your credit score will suffer.

As you can see, though there is no perfect formula to know how many inquiries will affect your credit and how. There are some guidelines that you need to follow. Avoid hard credit pulls that check your credit score with your authorization to evaluate approval of a loan product unless strictly necessary. Apply only to a single lender whenever possible and if you need to try different lenders, don’t do it all within a short period. Take your time and let your credit recover before applying again.