How to remove hard inquiries from credit report is the often-asked question. Also called hard pull. Many of you think that removing a hard inquiry or several, will greatly improve your credit score. While having many hard inquiries on your credit report can be quite detrimental to the credit score, the damage is quite limited if you have well-established credit history. Of course, I saw once the credit report of the fellow who was looking for construction loan. He was building, remodeling homes for a living and was quite successful in getting loans and flipping homes. That was till the point when some idiot of a mortgage broker promised him the moon and the sun, and few stars as well. He shopped his credit report with few dozens of different lenders. Each did a hard pull, resulting in close to 40 hard inquiries against his credit report within two weeks. Needless to say, his credit score went some 200 points down, from mid 700s to lower 500s. But in those days, it was not a deal breaker and he eventually did get a loan. Good old days … and look where they led us to.

Sorry, just got carried away. The purpose of this post is to explain you that hard inquiries or hard credit pulls stay on the credit reports of 2 years, end of conversation. Well almost, because I am so talkative today I will visit few misconceptions that are circulating in the Internet.

1. Credit score normally drops about 5 points per hard inquiry.

This is wrong. Depending on your history, it can drop by more points or do not drop at all. In addition, if you have several hard inquiries within few days and your history is rather fresh, each subsequent hard pull often does more damage than the preceding one, to the point of course.

2. You can bump a hard credit inquiry off your credit report by doing soft inquiries by using a credit monitoring service every day to the point, that your credit report has no space to show hard inquiries, thus increasing your credit score.

This is a bad joke. First of all, I doubt there are many credit monitoring services allowing to check your credit every day. But regardless, credit report simply shows what data is in the computer system against your social security number and name, so you will still get ‘Too Many Inquiries’ negative code even if hard inquiries are not displayed due to the lack of space.

3. You can request to merge valid credit inquiries with the resulting accounts. If you applied for a credit card, you will have an inquiry on your credit reports. If you are approved, you will also see the account listed on your credit report as a trade line. You are in effect, having this account impact your credit reports twice. By requesting that the inquiry be merged with the account, you will improve your credit score, and show less hard inquiries on your credit files.

Now, this is completely wrong. First of all, the accounts and inquiries on a credit report are in two different sections, and there is no way merging them. Second, use your credit card wisely, and in several weeks, any negative impact from both, having a hard inquiry and opening a new account will be negated and subsequently improved by the positive new trade line.

So how can you remove hard credit inquiries from your credit report? Only by disputing those pesky hard pulls with credit reporting agencies and proving that they were not authorized. Which, even if they really were not, is often quite difficult and is not worth the effort. Of course, if you are like that builder I mentioned in the beginning, removing hard credit inquiries is worth fighting for. Will post credit inquiry removal letter soon. Meanwhile, here are few relevant links you may want to visit,
credit inquiries
credit score models
credit report codes
TransUnion codes

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