Many people tend to over focus on removing inquiries when their reports are full of lates pays, collection accounts or even a bankruptcy. In these cases, you might want to save efforts to remove inquires until later. Here are more of our thoughts on when in the credit repair process you should start working on removing inquiries.
How do You Get Inquiries?
Every time you apply for credit and the credit grantor checks your credit report, a credit inquiry is placed on your file. Even if you receive a credit offer in the mail and you respond, your credit will almost certainly be checked and a credit inquiry will be added to your credit report.
Types of Inquiries
Hard pull inquiries occur when you applied for new credit, like a credit card, submitted a loan application for a car or home. Hard pull inquires can affect your credit score.
Soft pull inquiries occur when an existing credtior pulls your credit to see what your credit situation is. Soft inquiries also occurs when you pull your own credit report. Soft inquiries do not affect your credit score.
Why Does an Inquiry Affect Your Credit Score?
Credit inquiries are bad because too many of them can indicate to a creditor that you're "credit hungry" and may be in financial trouble.
Worse yet, the creditor has reason to believe that you received many of the credit lines that are showing as inquiries, and that many of those credit lines have not yet appeared on your credit report.
Too many recent inquiries indicate to a potential credit grantor that your debt-to-income ratio may be much higher than you say.
