It’s bad enough that you had to file a bankruptcy.  It’s even worse when your mortgage lender stops reporting your timely made payments made after the date you filed bankruptcy and refused to report any more timely made payments.  That hurts your credit score greatly.

A good piece of your credit score, 35% of it, is made up of timely made payments.  This means that every time you make an on time payment to a lender, your credit score goes up.  A lot of timely made payments can raise your credit score greatly.  Unfortunately, when someone files for bankruptcy, the mortgage lenders especially Wells Fargo and Bank of America, just don’t seem to know how to report payments made after bankruptcy, so they sometimes, they stop reporting payments.

We have seen cases against these mortgage lenders and others for failing to report timely made payments.  In fact, on the tradelines that they report to the credit bureaus, many of the banks will report the loans as closed which is improper, if not illegal.  People who desire to keep their homes during and after bankruptcy will continue to make their monthly mortgage payments as usual, but the banks will refuse to credit the payments to the balance owed and refuse to report the timely made payments.  This results in the tradeline balance being over stated and your credit score being illegally depressed.

How your unreported payments to the mortgage companies are hurting your credit…and you.

Under the law, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, all lenders reporting information to the credit bureaus, must report accurate information.  If they are informed that something is not reporting properly, they are required to investigate your dispute and then update the reporting so that its accurate.  Bankruptcy does not change that requirement at all.

Every payment you make on your mortgage loan, either before or after you file for bankruptcy, must be reported to the credit bureau.  By failing to report timely made payments, your lender is reporting that you owe a much higher balance on your mortgage than you do and is denying you the benefit of timely made payments to FICO, the company that creates credit scores.  This can only hurt your ability to get jobs, cars, housing and other credit that you may need to live life.

What you need to know if you have ever filed bankruptcy while having a mortgage.

          Get a copy of your credit reports.  You can even get free copies from CreditKarma.com.  See if your lender reported all of your payments both before and after you filed for bankruptcy.  If your lender failed to report the payments after you have filed for bankruptcy, you need to send the credit bureau (not the lender directly), a letter explaining that you made payments on your mortgage loan even after you filed for bankruptcy.  Demand that the credit bureau inform the lender to update your tradeline by reporting all of the post bankruptcy payments and to reduce the outstanding balance accordingly.  Chances are…. they will not.

What you need to do next.

          Call us at Gary D. Nitzkin, P.C. at (216) 358-0591 or email us your credit reports at [email protected].  Let us send the right letters to the credit bureaus for free.  If we can get them to post your payments, we are happy to do so for free.  If we have to file a lawsuit against your mortgage lender and the credit bureaus (we have filed and settled a lot of these kinds of lawsuits), it will still cost you nothing out of pocket.  Under the law, we can and do collect our fees and costs from the defendants in any successful action or settlement.

Lets get your credit score increased as soon as possible.  Call or email us today.