One of the largest myths that a credit restoration firm has to contend with is the myth of credit
inquiry shopping windows.
Not exact matches
Because credit bureaus allow a
shopping window for auto and mortgage financing, these
inquiries would only count as a single
inquiry on your credit if they are done within a short period of time.
If you're
shopping for a car, for example, most scoring systems aggregate multiple
inquiries that occur within a 30 - or 14 - day
window.
Consumers should keep in mind that the impact of this credit
window will also depend on the state of your credit and number of
inquiries prior to loan
shopping.
FICO allows a 30 - day
window for «rate
shopping» when
inquiries from different sources will only count as one
inquiry.
So if you want to
shop for a student loan from different lenders, doing so within a 45 - day
window will result in only one
inquiry on your credit file.
Fair Isaac Corporation (or FICO) calls this «rate
shopping,» and allows a 45 - day
window where the numerous hard
inquiries are treated as just one.
Then, all of the
inquiries made by that category of lender during the rate -
shopping window count as just one
inquiry against your score.
During a
shopping window all
inquiries of the same type are counted as one
inquiry.
FICO does allow for mortgage rate
shopping within a 45 - day
window, meaning you can seek preapproval from multiple lenders without having each credit
inquiry count against you.