Crazy BK Story - Quick Score Recovery

[cubswin]

First, just wanted to thank the board and all the people that responding to my silly questions throughout my BK. It was recently discharged and completed. Wanted to make this post to show those there is hope for a quick recovery of your credit score as well as ask the board gurus for their thoughts on this fast recovery story...Explain this to me...

Got discharged on 6/15/2010, this year, less than 2 months ago. My score is up to 707 already.

Here's why, and you tell me if this makes sense, because I have a close friend in mortgages (who has been pulling/monitoring my report/score for me), and she is shocked. Said she has never seen anything like it.

- I defaulted on over 60K in credit card debt as well as a car lease that was eventually sold at wholesale right before filing. They said I owed them 17K after the sale. Before I filed I was late (purposely) on all these payments by around 8 months. I think my score bottomed around 480.

- Before filing I replaced the vehicle with a car loan cosigned on by a family member. Paid that throughout and retained it through BK.

- Kept my mortgage and 2nd mortgage current throughout BK. Both have a 4 year good payment history.

- I got a credit card from my credit union with $2,000 limit before BK. They let me retain it through the BK. I am using it currently. Carry a balance thru the 1st of each month so it reports to bureaus as being used with a balance, and pay it off each month.

- I got added (after BK was discharged) to a family member's card as an authorized user. Was approved through AmEx as an authrorized user with own card. There was some debate about whether this would do any good. It did, score jumped after that addition. Only reason I got approved though was my score was around 650 to begin with a month after BK was discharged.

- I've done all the cleaning up of credit reports to make sure everything fell off...luckily for me that has been easy as it was pretty clean and my creditors all reported the BK correctly.

Thoughts? Am I just really, really lucky? All my scores are right around 700. Any insight as to how this happened so quickly? Good luck and God Bless you all.

[SMinGA]

Question: what method are you relying on to track your score? You actually have 3 reports, but can only obtain FICO scores for 2 of them. (Unless a mortgage lender pulls your credit and tells you the scores.)

Comment: I don't know the details, but I understand there are credit pools. Such as someone with a recent BK is compared to others with recent bankruptcies, someone without a bankruptcy is compared to others without bankruptcy.

If that is true, it could simply be that your credit is fairly well cleaned up - for someone with a recent bankruptcy. Yet before you filed, your score was fairly low (due to high balances, late payments, etc.).

Plus of course things have a time effect on your score. I don't know when you filed, but if all your prior lates are now over 6-12 months ago - they would have less impact than if you were still reported as late.

[cubswin]

Filed 3/2/2010

Mortgage lender is pulling it for me...pulling all reports, all scores available. Experian is the one that is 707. Pulled that from the Experian website at time of posting (as once your BK finishes all bureaus must provide you the opportunity to pull one credit report within 12 months), had 1 error on it that is in process of getting corrected. All other reports are clean.

[ryan]

well thats pretty impressive. I think not having delinquent mortgages helped alot. You also carried thru a lot other credit like car loan, credit union card and like you say, your rising scores were already helping you gain even more credit. (like the authorized user Amex)

I think it was a combination of work, attention to detail, paying thru alot of things (most don't or can't do that) and yes, a little luck!

[2manybills]

well thats pretty impressive. I think not having delinquent mortgages helped alot. You also carried thru a lot other credit like car loan, credit union card and like you say, your rising scores were already helping you gain even more credit. (like the authorized user Amex)

I think it was a combination of work, attention to detail, paying thru alot of things (most don't or can't do that) and yes, a little luck!

Even if you are paying your mortgage, once it is discharged in BK, it should still only say Discharged in Bankruptcy. Even on my car, we reaffirmed it and they do not show payment history anymmore. Our credit score dipped a little, but my Dh is already at 691. I think it's because we filed about 2 months after we quit paying cc's.

[ccsjoe]

A couple financial advisors and credit gurus I work with told me that credit scores can recover rapidly after bk if I maintained the car loan and FMC continues reporting after discharge (which they said they would) and if I had no serious delinquencies prior to filing, e.g. no 90+day lates. I also intend on maintaining a Dell credit line of 2K and an American Airlines credit line of 1k, all currently at 0 balance, if they do not close them due to my filing. I beleieve both the Dell and the AA credit lines are through Citi, I am defaulting on nothing related to Citi, only BofA, Elan Financial, Comerica Bank, and a small credit union.

[dumpinmydebt]

Even if you are paying your mortgage, once it is discharged in BK, it should still only say Discharged in Bankruptcy. Even on my car, we reaffirmed it and they do not show payment history anymmore. Our credit score dipped a little, but my Dh is already at 691. I think it's because we filed about 2 months after we quit paying cc's.

That's not true. If you reaffirmed, the payments should still report to the credit bureau. They wouldn't report if you did a ride through.

You probably need to contact the lender and advise them that your payments are not showing up on your credit report.

[dumpinmydebt]

Way to go cubswin

What was your middle score? There would have been 3 scores received from the mortgage lender. Lending companies usually use the middle score.

It does show that people can recover from bk, with work.

[tay666]

That's not true. If you reaffirmed, the payments should still report to the credit bureau. They wouldn't report if you did a ride through.

You probably need to contact the lender and advise them that your payments are not showing up on your credit report.

There is no obligation for any creditor to report to the credit bureaus.
In other words, they don't have to report if they don't want to.

It wouldn't hurt to call, as they might decide to report.
But again, you can't make them report if they don't want to.

[2manybills]

There is no obligation for any creditor to report to the credit bureaus.
In other words, they don't have to report if they don't want to.

It wouldn't hurt to call, as they might decide to report.
But again, you can't make them report if they don't want to.

True, I contacted our creditor was is Toyota Motor Credit. Even though I reaffirmed with them, they said they don't report to the credit agency. In fact, they still don't send a statement for our payment.