How Much Will Your Credit Score Rise When Negative Items Come Off?

Consumers often wonder how many points their credit score will rise once bad information comes off of their credit report. While the answer is complicated due to the way credit scores take this negative information into account, there are some basic patterns that have emerged from the credit reporting agencies over the years.

As time passes, negative information on your credit report gets looked at less in the eyes of the algorithms that make up your credit score. You will almost always see a bigger credit score bump from removing something like a collections account 3 months after it is put on as opposed to a 7 year old collections account falling off.

Financeography Tip: Checking your actual credit score through Credit Sesame is completely free and only takes about 3 minutes.

As far as what you can normally expect in terms of how many points your credit score will rise, the following should serve as a decent guideline for most people. The higher end of the spectrum would be more of what you would see if something came off immediately, while the lower end is what you might expect after the seven year statute of limitations for credit reporting expires.

Collections Accounts: 20-80+ points – Collections accounts are the biggest credit report dings that most people will see. All it takes is even a tiny overlooked bill to get sent to collections and you can see your credit score tank. While some agencies do not always take certain types of collections accounts into consideration -medical debt under $150- most collections accounts will hurt your credit quite a bit.

Late Payments: 5-60 points – One 30 day late payment falling off of your account after seven years will have minimal effect while a 60 or 90 day late payment being removed immediately will have a very noticeable positive effect.

Repossessions: 30-80 points – While these are hard to take off without the passage of time, it is possible to have repossessions removed from your credit report.

Hard Inquiries: 5-20 points – Hard inquiries have a relatively small effect on your credit score compared to just about any other type of negative mark. Unless your credit was pulled without your permission, the only to remove an inquiry is to wait until it falls off in 1-2 years.

Charged-off Accounts: 15-75 points – These are similar to collections accounts since many credit card companies report your account as charged off and sell/assign your debt to a collection agency, resulting in a double ding on your credit report.

Court Judgments: 10-30 points – Not all credit reporting agencies will list court judgments, especially if you live in an area that does not have an easy to access public database for court records.

Tax Liens: 20-90 points – The good news about a tax lien is that the IRS does have a form that lets you get this removed easily once the lien has been paid.

Foreclosures: 30-75 points – Foreclosures look very bad on a credit report because it usually means the company holding the loan lost a lot of money. If there was enough equity in the home, a short sale might have occurred instead, allowing the lender to break even or come close to it.

Bankruptcies : 30-60 points – A bankruptcy is going to stick on your credit report for a minimum of three years and there isn’t much that can be done about it if you are still paying it off. The credit score hit is the trade-off you receive in exchange for your debts being wiped away.

Removing negative information from your credit report isn’t always easy and at time, may be next to impossible. Managing to get some of these marks off though will improve your scores on just about any algorithm that depends on your credit report. The number of negative marks on your account will also affect how your score will move, with a higher number of negative items leading to lower bumps in your credit score from just getting one removed.