Length of Time Since Derogatory Public Record or Collection is Too Short |
By Kenneth Long on July 13, 2010
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| "Length of Time Since Derogatory Public Record or Collection is Too Short" |
Credit Score Risk Factor Codes |
| Equifax |
20 |
| Experian |
20 |
| TransUnion |
20 |
| NextGen |
K1 |
Judgments can do more than crimp your bank account (levies) or paycheck (garnishments). They can also show up on your credit report and prevent you from getting new credit. Collection agencies can also show up, resulting in the credit bureau generating a code on your credit report. This code reads "length of time since derogatory public record or collection is too short."
When you have had serious defaults on credit accounts, the information reported to the credit bureaus can drastically reduce your scores. Furthermore, it can prevent approval for new credit accounts. Payment history controls 35% of your credit scores, and this risk factor is a major contributor to payment history.
When lenders are evaluating your credit application, they want to see that you are a low credit risk. They may be willing to accept higher credit risk applicants, but they prefer to see improvements in your credit history.
If your credit report reflects collection accounts and legal action from 5 years ago, it might be overlooked by a lender if you have been current on all of your other accounts since then. However, if they see that you have judgments and collection activity from 3 months ago, you are clearly still dealing with major financial problems.
Those derogatory records can prevent you from loan approval for a couple of reasons. First, the lender is not convinced that you have recovered from those financial struggles. They think that you will also struggle to repay your new account if it is approved.
Second, lenders know that even if a collection agency has not pursued legal action, they could do so in the future. As long as the statute of limitations has not expired, that creditor could still file for a judgment. A judgment could impair your ability to pay your other debts, which is enough to keep you from getting a new account approved.
For this risk code, the best remedy is to avoid having any of your other accounts result in a collection account or judgment. You will need for enough time to pass for the code to go away on its own.
Fair Isaac and the three main credit bureaus are not specific on how much time must pass before this code will drop off. We can speculate that you will need a minimum of 2 years of judgment/collection free time before it will pass. It is of course possible that more time is needed, so you should plan accordingly if you have goals that require new credit accounts in the future.
If you have had a derogatory public record or collection account and not enough time has passed, you should avoid opening any new credit accounts for a while. You can still improve your score by focusing on some of the other risk factors that might be lowering your credit scores.
Join the Discussion at the Credit Forum: Have you ever successfully negotiated a pay for deletion agreement with a debt collector?
Length of time since derogatory public record or collection is too short is credit bureau risk score reason 20. It is NextGen score code K1. For more information on credit scoring, see the complete list of credit score factors.
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