credit score Archives - Kind-of-Lost

What Is a Remark Code on Your Credit Report?

People send me screenshots all the time. Half are tradeline questions, but the other half are things someone spotted on Credit Karma and couldn’t decode — and lately the one that keeps landing in my inbox is a little notation called a remark code on a credit report. It looks official, it shows up with no explanation, and the bureau never bothers to tell you what it actually means.

So here is the plain-English version. A remark code isn’t a score and it isn’t a penalty (though it sure can feel like one when it appears out of nowhere). It’s a short label attached to one of your accounts, and once you know how to read it, most of the mystery goes away.

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How Many Tradelines Do I Need for a Mortgage?

Buyers ask me this a lot — usually when they’re a few months out from applying for a home loan and trying to clean up their file. The short answer you’ll find everywhere is “three tradelines,” and that’s not wrong exactly, but it’s incomplete enough that I’d want to walk through it before you take it as a hard rule. Related: cheap tradelines — worth reading if this applies to you.

Too Few Accounts with Payments as Agreed

Buyers mention this phrase to me fairly often. They’ve pulled their credit report — or looked at the score breakdown in Credit Karma — and found “too few accounts with payments as agreed” listed somewhere in the factors holding their number down. The phrase sounds like jargon, but it’s pointing at something specific: your credit file doesn’t have enough accounts with a consistent record of on-time payments. Understanding why that matters, and what you can realistically do about it, is straightforward once you see what the scoring model is actually measuring.

Why Is My VantageScore Lower Than FICO?

Buyers sometimes contact me having watched their Credit Karma score climb for months, then run into a wall when a mortgage broker pulls their actual FICO and the numbers don’t match. Sometimes by 40 points. Sometimes more. The question that follows — why is my VantageScore lower than my FICO? — is one I hear fairly often, and it usually comes with a side of frustration, because the free score on their phone every week isn’t the one that matters to a mortgage underwriter.

Does Removing Hard Inquiries Increase Credit Score

At one point I had around ten hard inquiries on my credit report. That’s what happens when you open cards specifically to season them for tradeline sales — you apply, they pull your credit, repeat. (I’m back down to around five now, which is more comfortable.) So I’ve thought about this question more than most: does removing hard inquiries increase your credit score? The answer is: technically yes, but probably not by enough to matter for most people. Related: When Do Credit Inquiries Fall Off — worth reading if this applies to you.