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Welcome to Wednesday!  Also known as Humpday but probably most famously known as Watch-It Wednesday!  You’re half way through the week so sit back, relax and let Quicken Loans mortgage banker Marshall O’Keefe answer a couple questions: Do I have to provide my social security number? And, how is my credit score affected by having my credit pulled?

What’s your mortgage question? Let us know at: content@quickenloans.com.

If you can’t see the embedded video, watch why you have to provide your social security number here.

Video Transcription:

Hi, my name is Marshall O’Keefe and I’m here to talk to you guys today about a couple quick questions that we get from clients very often first of all being ‘why do we need your social security number’ ? The answer to that question is so we can access your credit report. We are actually pulling reports from all three of the major bureaus which are: Experian, Equifax and Trans-Union. And this information is already on file with these companies. What we’re asking for your social for is to be able to match up the records they already maintain.

One of the follow-up questions that often comes after that is ‘how is my score going to be affected by having my credit pulled?’ and the easiest answer is there’s going to be a very small affect on it. Usually the first time you have it accessed it’s between 3 and 5 points, which is obviously not very major when it comes to your overall score. The good news also is that the bureaus are able to differentiate these days as to what types of organizations are accessing your credit — and a mortgage lender is going to be looked at much less adversely than some other types of organizations.

One last piece to keep in mind is that you have a 14 day window when looking around for different lenders — If you have your credit pulled once, generally speaking you’ve got about 14 days to have it accessed multiple times. That’s really only seen as one pull when it comes to the actual inquires on your report.

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