Brandon Nelson

Credit Tips from Heidi Goodman at the Bank of the Pacific

Whenever a home buyer asks for a lender referral, I send them to Bank of the Pacific. The list of reasons is long:

• It starts with their people: polite, informed, intelligent, pleasant people with a customer-centric attitude from beginning to end.
• Their rates and programs are ultra-competitive if not competition-crushing.
• Their application process is refined and effiicient — even pleasant.
• They do not mis-lead potential buyers that clearly do not qualify to buy, but instead will go out of their way to provide a custom-written path to purchase — an outline for the buyer to reach their financing goals.
• They communicate early and often throughout the transaction (communication is the fuel AND the lubricant in the engine of real estate).
• They only use local appraisers (ask any lender where the appraiser for your home will be driving (or flying) in from! Hint: Insist on a local appraiser!)

And the list goes on and on. The bottom line for me is the experience of working a continuous stream of successful transactions with Bank of the Pacific, closing on time or even early, with no excuses, no curve balls… just honest to goodness professionalism and results.

On that note, I asked loan representative Heidi Goodman at the Lakeway Dr. branch – inside the RE/MAX building —  to share a few hints on establishing and maintaining credit. She immediately sent me this:

Hi Brandon,
I have some helpful hints on how to improve and maintain one’s credit score.  
1)      Try and have at least 3 credit trade lines with a 12-month payment history.
2)      Do not carry a balance greater than 40% of the actual credit card limit.
3)      If you are just starting out, be sure to charge on the card and pay it off each month thus building your credit history.
4)      If there are errors on your credit report, address them immediately. It can often take up to 3 months to resolve them and another 60 days for the bureaus to update the information.

I e-mailed back: Heidi, can you explain “trade line?”

Absolutely!  Tradelines are just what we bankers call open accounts… so they want to have 3 open active credit cards.  If someone is trying to build credit and is under the 40% threshold I would suggest not paying the balance in full each month, but instead keeping a small balance to demonstrate they have the capacity to owe and manage the debt they owe.  If the person has an “established” credit history (meaning they have had an open credit card for over 12 months) then I would suggest, if possible, that they pay the balance in full each month. That’s because they have already built their credit history and now want to maintain and improve it.
Let me know if you have any additional questions.
Thanks ~Heidi

The lender plays a HUGE role in the real estate transaction. Choose carefully and wisely after you ask around, shop around, and meet face to face with a few different lenders. My guess is, if you do that, you’ll end up at the Bank of the Pacific.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 12:49 am and is filed under Buyer Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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