In this video, I explain what you need to do to prepare your credit for a mortgage. You can't just wake up one day and decide you're going to buy a house. There is quite a bit of prep work that needs to be done in order to buy a house.
It all starts with obtaining your credit reports. I constantly recommend going to https://annualcreditreport.com and https://experian.com. Always do the FREE accounts. There is no need to pay to see your own credit reports. There are too many free options available.
The scoring model is looking at your revolving accounts like credit cards, store cards, and gas cards. If you do not have any revolving accounts like this, you will never have a high score. Keep your utilization as low as possible and use your cards monthly so there is something to report.
Dispute old lates on any accounts that you have and add new tradelines, especially when your credit file is thin and/or you have past bad credit.
