Does running a credit report with Rent Application affect my credit score?

Credit inquiries and their impact

Rent Application provides Transunion or Experian credit reports. If you do not know which is being used for the application you are working with, our customer support team is happy to check for you.

Experian reports are consumer initiated reports, which result in a soft hit. 

Transunion reports run after July 8th, 2020 are a soft hit on the applicant's credit report.

Transunion reports run before July 8th, 2020 are a hard hit on the applicant's credit report. 

What is a soft inquiry?

Soft inquiries (also known as “soft pulls”) typically occur when a person or company checks your credit as part of a background check. This may occur, for example, when a credit card issuer checks your credit without your permission to see if you qualify for certain credit card offers. Your employer might also run a soft inquiry before hiring you.

Unlike hard inquiries, soft inquiries won’t affect your credit scores. (They may or may not be recorded in your credit reports, depending on the credit bureau.) Since soft inquiries aren’t connected to a specific application for new credit, they’re only visible to you when you view your credit reports.

What is a hard inquiry?

Hard inquiries (also known as “hard pulls”) generally occur when a financial institution, such as a lender or credit card issuer, checks your credit when making a lending decision. They commonly take place when you apply for a mortgage, loan or credit card, and you typically have to authorize them.

A hard inquiry could lower your scores by a few points, or it may have a negligible effect on your scores. In most cases, a single hard inquiry is unlikely to play a huge role in whether you’re approved for a new card or loan. And the damage to your credit scores usually decreases or disappears even before the inquiry drops off your credit reports for good.

Common Question

How long will a hard inquiry stay on my credit reports?

-Generally speaking, hard inquires stay on your credit reports for about two years.

 

What if my credit file is frozen?

Rent Application processes credit reports through 2 credit bureaus, Experian and Transunion. In order to successfully provide a credit report, your credit file cannot be frozen or locked. 

If you do have a frozen credit file, please contact the appropriate credit bureau to to request that they do a complete unfreeze of your file for at least 24 hours. We cannot accept codes for temporary access.

If you're unsure which bureau your report is being processed with, simply email support (support@rentapplication.net) and let us know the link to the application form you were provided, and we can let you know! 

 

Why is my credit score different on Rent Application?

 

You can expect to see different credit scores depending where you look — your FICO score will be different than your Credit Karma score, which will be different than the score provided by your credit card company. This is because you have dozens of credit scores — you don’t have just one.

The reason your scores are all different is because different institutions use different models and scales to calculate credit scores.

Even when companies — like your credit card company or Credit Karma — say they are using information from a certain agency, that score may be different than what you see from that agency. For example, your credit card company could include a free credit score on your monthly bill that shows a 750 score based on TransUnion information, but when you see your  TransUnion score on Rent Application, you could see a score of 780. This is not unusual.

As if that’s not enough variation, you can also have different FICO scores between each of the three credit agencies (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax).

Keep in mind, however, that free services typically use your Vantage Score, which is a different scoring model altogether!

While you cannot dispute the score provided on your processed credit report, you can dispute other information on your report that contributes to that score. If you see any information listed that is not accurate, please contact our support team for assistance.

 

Need more help? Contact our support team directly for more assistance.