Are Inquiries Really Killing Your Credit? What You Need to Know

People often point the finger at inquiries as the cause of their bad credit, but is this blame justified? Can inquiries really kill your credit score? Keep reading to find out.

Credit Inquiries Definition

A credit inquiry, also commonly referred to as a credit check or a credit pull, is a request by a business to check your credit report.

There are two different types of credit inquiries: a hard inquiry (or “hard pull”) and a soft inquiry (or “soft pull”).

The type of inquiry depends on the reason for the credit pull and the business conducting it.

A hard inquiry occurs when a business who is considering issuing you credit gets your credit report from one of the bureaus.

What Is a Hard Inquiry?

A hard inquiry is when a creditor who is considering issuing you credit pulls your credit report from one of the credit bureaus.

Hard inquiries typically occur when you are applying for loans, including mortgages or auto loans, as well as credit cards.

When you are “rate shopping” to look for the best interest rates on an installment loan, such as a mortgage, auto loan, or student loan, FICO doesn’t penalize your score for this. As long as the credit inquiries are within 45 days of each other, they will all be counted as just a single inquiry.

How Many Points Does a Hard Inquiry Affect a Credit Score?

Since a hard credit inquiry on your credit report means you are actively seeking to get new credit, this is seen as risky behavior by lenders. According to FICO, people with six or more inquiries on their credit files are eight times more likely to declare bankruptcy than people who do not have any inquiries on their credit reports.

For this reason, each inquiry may lower your credit score by up to five points. 

The specific number of points an inquiry costs you depends on other factors in your individual credit profile, such as the length of time since your last inquiry. If you do not have any other inquiries on your credit report, a hard pull likely won’t affect your score very much.

Depending on what else is in your credit profile, it may not even lower your score at all.

When Do Hard Inquiries Fall Off a Credit Report?

Hard inquiries are automatically removed from your credit report after two years.

How Long Do Hard Inquiries Affect a Credit Score?

While hard credit inquiries fall off your credit report in two years, they only impact your credit score for the first year.

What Is a Soft Inquiry (Soft Credit Check)?

A landlord may do a soft credit check when evaluating your rental application.

A soft inquiry, also known as a soft pull or soft credit check, can happen for a variety of different reasons. Unlike hard inquiries, which are conducted by businesses considering offering you new credit for the first time, soft pulls are used by entities that are interested in your credit report for other purposes.

This could include potential employers or landlords pulling your credit as part of a background check, for example.

When you check your own credit report, this is also considered a soft inquiry.

Soft credit checks may also be used by businesses you already have accounts with who routinely check to make sure you are still a creditworthy consumer.

How Do Credit Inquiries Affect Your Credit Score?

Soft inquiries do not affect your credit score. Soft pulls are typically not used when you are actively seeking new credit, so they do not necessarily indicate risky financial behavior. Therefore, they are not factored into your credit score.

Since checking your own credit report is classified as a soft credit check, you do not need to worry that checking your own credit report will affect your score. It is a myth that checking your credit will make your score go down. You can actually check your own credit report as many times as you like without it affecting your score.

New credit makes up 10% of a FICO score.

In fact, you can even get a free soft credit check of your own report using free sites like creditkarma.com.

When it comes to hard pulls, although people tend to fixate on the impact of these hard credit inquiries, the truth is that they are a relatively minor player in your credit score.

Of the factors that go into your credit score, the category that includes inquiries, “new credit,” is the smallest one, making up about 10% of your score. 

Within that small category of new credit, according to FICO, there are several different data points that are taken into consideration. These data points include:

The number of new accounts
The proportion of new accounts vs. seasoned accounts for each type of account
The number of recent credit inquiries
The amount of time that has passed since recent account opening(s) for each type of account
The amount of time that has passed since recent credit inquiries

As you can see, there are several variables in this category that can affect your credit score beyond the number of inquiries on your credit report.

Since inquiries are just one variable within one small piece of the credit score pie, they do not weigh heavily on one’s credit score. Therefore, as we mentioned above, each hard inquiry should only cost you a maximum of five points, and if they are done in a short period of time they often are only counted as one inquiry.

Inquiries typically only cause problems if you show new hard inquiries continuously over a long span of time, which makes you seem more risky to potential lenders.

One possible reason for this conclusion is if you continuously have your credit ran over an extended period of time, the lenders assume that you are being denied credit. As mentioned above, this is not the case as long as the inquiries are done in a short period of time. That is assumed to be the “shopping” period.

In the case of someone having continuous hard pulls over an extended period of time, a few points lost per inquiry can add up if there are a lot of them. If you have 10 inquiries on your credit report over an extended period of time and the average decrease in score per inquiry is 3 points, that’s a total loss of 30 points! If you are near the lower edge of the “good credit” range, this 30-point dip could take you into a lower credit score level.

This would be an example of a more extreme situation, but if this person were in the “bad credit” category after the hit from these inquiries, the inquiries may have tipped the scale on the credit score category, but they are not the original cause of being on the cusp of bad credit to begin with.

Some people believe that you cannot get a mortgage if you have recent inquiries on your credit report. However, inquiries themselves are typically not an automatic disqualifier, although you may have to give a few sentences explaining each inquiry. If you have enough inquiries on your credit report to lower your score, though, this could affect the terms of your loan.

Can You Remove Inquiries From Your Credit Report?

People with a lot of inquiries on their credit reports often want to know how to remove inquiries from a credit report fast. However, as with any credit repair process, there is no silver bullet that will instantly boost your credit score. It takes time, work, and patience if you want to see your credit score go up.

It’s also important to note that there is no legitimate way to remove timely and accurate inquiries from your credit report. If you really did get a hard inquiry, it would be fraudulent to lie and claim that the inquiry should be removed.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, “No one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from a credit report.”

The same rules apply when you are working with a credit repair company. The FTC says, “The first rule of credit repair is that no credit repair company can remove accurate and timely negative information from someone’s credit report.” 

If you have inaccurate inquiries shown on your credit report as a result of identity theft or a reporting error, however, you can and should look into how to delete hard inquiries so you can get the credit inquiries removed.

How to Remove Inquiries From a Credit Report

Hard inquiry removal may seem intimidating, but removing credit inquiries from your credit report is certainly possible if they are inaccurate or fraudulent.

If you are interested in how to delete credit inquiries, the best way to go about it is by writing a credit inquiry removal letter. Write a letter to the credit bureau(s) that explains the errors and proving that you did not authorize the hard pull on your credit report. Also, attach a copy of your credit report indicating which inquiries are inaccurate. The FTC provides a sample letter that you can use as a template.

Once the bureau(s) receives your credit inquiries letter, they have 30 days to investigate the dispute and respond. If the creditor cannot prove that you authorized the hard pulls on your account, the bureau will delete the inquiries from your credit report, and the credit inquiry removal process will be complete.

Conclusion on Credit Inquiries

We often hear people blaming their bad credit on the fact that they have too many inquiries on their credit. However, we do not believe that inquiries are really the cause of bad credit.

We believe the cause of bad credit usually comes down to missed payments, defaults on loans, and/or high credit utilization. These factors are much more significant than simply too many inquiries. 

We are aware that on many credit monitoring platforms, the system may mention that the person has too many inquiries. Perhaps this is one cause of the myth that inquiries are the cause of bad credit.

However, as illustrated in this article, inquiries are only one data point among several other data points within the category known as “new credit,” which accounts for around 10% of someone’s overall credit score. This does not mean that inquiries alone count for 10% of your credit score. It means that inquiries are one of several data points that combined account for around 10% of a credit score, so it should be fair to assume that inquires, in fact, count for less than 10% of a credit score.

It may be possible for inquiries to have a significant effect on one’s credit score in extreme cases such as someone having multiple hard inquiries pulled continuously over the course of a year. However, in more typical scenarios, inquiries most likely are not the cause of someone having bad credit.

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