Landlords aren’t required to report to the three most popular credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, so years of on-time rental payments don’t necessarily influence first-time homebuyers’ all-important credit scores when they apply for a mortgage, syndicated columnist Ken Harney wrote for The Columbus Dispatch.
But that’s changing, Harney writes. Experian and TransUnion are beginning to include rental payment histories into credit files and will use them to calculate credit scores, he notes.
Harney also points out there are alternative credit reporting services available to first-time homebuyers, such as ECredable.com, that incorporate payment history information that isn’t reported to the major credit bureaus, such as phone and cable payments.
Source: The Columbus Dispatch
