Credit reports can make or break your chances of getting financing. Yet, for most people, their single biggest account never gets reported on their bureau: their mortgage.
It’s kind of illogical because your credit score is supposed to be an accurate rating of your willingness and ability to pay your bills. Yet, without your biggest bill on the bureau, credit scores are arguably incomplete.
As of today, very few lenders report to the bureaus according to Equifax. For example, BMO reports its mortgages to the bureaus but Scotia and RBC do not. Virtually no non-bank lenders report either. However, a number of credit unions do.
This will all likely change down the road. Scotiabank is one of a group of lenders who are considering reporting mortgages to the bureaus. Scotia’s Ann DeRabbie says, “We are working with the industry on this and there is some testing going on, but nothing that would directly affect consumers at this point.” DeRabbie says, “It is still [in the] very early days” of planning.
That said, despite most mortgages not being included in your score, don’t think you can miss a payment without other lenders finding out. Mortgage lenders will sometimes contact your previous lender to get a “mortgage rating” on you–especially if your credit is not perfect. Your mortgage rating will tell them exactly how well you’ve made your mortgage payments.
Often, a bad mortgage rating can kill a deal. We’ve had more than one client tell us they make payments on time without fail, only to see a bad mortgage rating void their commitment at the last minute.
Mortgage ratings on bureau has been a debate for 10 plus years, the banks are afraid of the other banks stealing their mortgages, it’s done quite a bit in B.C.
As for mortgage ratings, some lenders will give you a good mortgage rating to get the bad loan off the books, bank statements is the best way to curb a verbal or one page mortgage rating from a dishonest mortgage company, xceed, hometrust–notorious for giving good repayment histories on bad (not paying) mortgages, beware!.
Wow, this is a great fact! I thought this should be in the credit report. If anything, this should help customers like us rather than being bad for us. I think it is pretty safe to say that anyone who can’t pay off their mortgage consistently is already having one bad credit report.
As an underwriter with a decade experience in the non-conforming lending sector. A good rule of thumb is that if the credit score is below 600 we’ll ask for at least a 6 month mortgage rating. At times one NSF payment will be tolerated provided the person does not go 30 days late
Important to Note: according to Equifax any mortgages that are reported to the client’s bureau are not included in the score! click on link for details. https://www.econsumer.equifax.ca/ca/main?forward=/view/common/template.jsp&body=/view/education/credit_ed.jsp?show=score_basics_llaanngg.jsp
With 8 years experiance at the bank branch level. Banks don’t want to know what you have with other banks so they can approve the 2nd deal/property with them or even the credit line..etc…
MG, thank you for letting us know that you do not care about hitting your bonus or sales growth.
With over 20 years experience in subprime, alt a and a business, being a former broker, holding senior roles, etc. and currently. I will state that a high level the banks are scared of losing deals via agressive competition, as a lender i pull a bureau and see a mortgage on a client’s bureau on say a cottage–with a-1 payment, etc, i would be a fool not to solicit the mortgage.
if mortgage is included in credit, does it show every month in your credit report? and then is it similar to line of credit then, if so, then your beacon score goes down because you show such high loan on your credit. any advice, if you want a mortgage which is open, variable and less than prime, which bank is ok for that?
Mortgages do show up monthly but they are not reported like revolving credit accounts. A high mortgage balance will not negatively impact your score the same way as high credit card balances.
Jeff
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