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Understanding Inquiries and Their Impact on Your Credit Score
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What Are Credit Inquiries?
When you apply for credit, whether it's a loan, mortgage, or credit card, lenders will check your credit report to assess your creditworthiness. This action is known as a "credit inquiry." There are two types of inquiries:
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Hard Inquiries: These occur when a lender checks your credit report as part of a loan or credit application. Hard inquiries can lower your credit score, especially if multiple inquiries are made within a short time frame.
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Soft Inquiries: These occur when you or a company checks your credit report as part of a background check or pre-approval process. Soft inquiries don’t affect your credit score.
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How Do Hard Inquiries Affect Your Score?
Each hard inquiry can decrease your credit score by a few points. While one or two inquiries may not have a significant impact, multiple hard inquiries over a short period can signal to lenders that you’re desperate for credit, which may make you appear risky.
How Credit Boost Can Help with Inquiries
As part of our Credit Boost service, we:
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Review Your Inquiries: We’ll take a close look at your credit report to identify any unnecessary or outdated hard inquiries.
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Dispute Unnecessary Inquiries: If there are hard inquiries on your report that shouldn’t be there or are outdated, we can dispute them on your behalf to help improve your credit score.
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Provide Guidance: We’ll offer advice on how to minimize the number of hard inquiries in the future, such as strategies for consolidating credit applications or using
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Can All Inquiries Be Removed?
It's important to understand that not all inquiries can be removed, especially if they were made as part of a legitimate credit application process. However, just like any other issue with your credit, our team at Financial Freedom America specializes in identifying unnecessary or incorrect inquiries, and we will work to remove them where possible. While it’s not guaranteed that all inquiries can be removed, we are committed to providing you with the best solutions and achieving fast, effective results.
