Talkin Waukesha Real Estate Weblog

Last month, for about five minutes, rates for 30 year fixed mortgages dipped into the 4.xx % range. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who got to my lender in time to refinance, but perhaps you were. The last time we refinanced, I remember a very unsettling flurry of activity that followed. We got dozens of letter from other finance companies telling us to refinance with them! I had to ask: how do they know I’m in the midst of refinancing….. Who told them??

Well, just when they’re passing all kinds of restrictive “privacy” acts on one hand – they’re giving away your firstborn with the other. As it turns out, the process is something like this: I go to a lender and start the refinance process. My lender, as part of that process, pulls a credit report. Now, there are actually THREE main credit bureaus and a prudent lender will pull your score from all three because there is some degree of variance. Here’s the scary part. Those credit bureaus RELEASE to anyone who pays them, the fact that a lender just pulled your credit report. If another lender is buying the list of people whose credit reports just got pulled – YOU get their junk mail! It was very unsettling to me to realize that my private transactions are being sold by the very people who hold my deepest financial secrets. And, there’s not much one can do to stop it!

Just so you don’t panic (like I did) and freeze your credit, report potential fraud and call an attorney, rest assured, ALL they can sell is the “who”. They don’t give your social security numbers or any personal information on your report. The balance of the mortgage you’re refinancing is already public record (who knew?!), so the letters are really more of an annoyance than anything else. If you want to see what your credit report looks like at all three agencies, you are legally entitled to a free copy of your report. The credit reporting agencies are: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. The ONLY free website that has NO OTHER STRINGS attached to get your free credit report (limited to one per year, per agency) is www.AnnualCreditReport.Com . The others you see advertised give you free credit reports, but want something else in return.

It baffles me, how much information is “out there” if someone knows where to look and how to get it. Here’s another one: If you’re shopping around for home owners insurance, you won’t be able conveniently forget past claims with your new insurance agent. That industry has a “Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange” information database that lists five years worth of claims reported, how many resulted in loss payments and how much each loss cost. You can order your CLUE Report for yourself: www.Choicetrust.Com . You may feel like you’re paranoid checking all this public information about yourself, but hey – it’s free….and then you’ll have a C.L.U.E. !