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From the August KATV interview with Patrick Dennis and Chris Kane
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From the station that's on your side
this is channel 7 news good morning
arkansas well after this break we're going to get
a visit with patrick from the bank of
little rock mortgage about the impact
Covid has had on credit scores in home
buying stick with us
hey welcome back to good morning
arkansas everybody patrick dennis joins
us now from bank of little rock mortgage
and patrick as a loan officer at
bank of little rock mortgage i know
you get a lot of questions about
what do i need to buy a house what do i
need to to start that process to get
that loan for my dream home and a lot of
times we've spoken you've given us a list of
things and one of those is
always know your credit score bring in a
copy of your credit score and today i
want to talk about how covet 19 is
impacting credit scores across the
country layoffs we've seen people who have been
able to push back payments is that
affecting it i want to take some time
with you to explain that today to our viewers so
what have you seen during the kobit 19 pandemic
that's affected credit scores
that people should be concerned about
moving forward if they're looking to get
a new house yeah so certainly uh covid19 has
affected all aspects of our lives
uh obviously jobs tens of tens of
millions of people
out there without um without jobs right
now that's naturally going to trickle down
to your income and your credit and the
whole deal so as far as credit goes we are seeing
uh credit scores dip a little bit bankrate
had a survey out a couple weeks ago that
had a third of credit card holders in the us
right now have done at least one thing
since the onset of the
pandemic that has hurt their credit wow
another number i saw was uh roughly 40
percent of americans
don't even know their credit score you
know it's it is wild and and
how do you how do you adjust to
something like the coronavirus if you
don't know your actual credit score
you know or you or you don't know how to
address it so uh one of those you know things is
how do you protect your credit score um
how do you work with it you want to go
reach out to those credit card companies
reach out to your mortgage company and
have those conversations so you know
exactly what you're looking at
i want to talk about deferred mortgage
payments or mispayment allowances
are those reflected on credit reports
yes so what that's called is a forbearance
essentially when you're when you're
trying to skip your payment now you
can't just naturally skip your payment
that will in your credit report in a in a hard
way you want to reach out to your mortgage
company you can apply for what's called the
forbearance plan and as part of the cares act
it's it's not negatively reported on your credit
report but just remember if you are applying
for a mortgage for a purchase or refinance
you would have to bring that forbearance
uh up to up to speed to be current
in order to get a pre-approved for for a
mortgage like that
also another key to the forbearance it's
it's a pause
in your payment it's not a cancellation
of the payment
you're going to have to catch up to it
at one point they give you i believe
it's 180 months
to go into forbearance then you can
reapply again
so that's a year of payments not made
but it's actually something that you're
going to have to catch up on it's just
not forgiven
let's talk about how lenders are viewing
credit scores these days are they
is it a different type of you know
magnifying glass that
that they're using considering the fact
that you know
like you said tens of millions of
americans filed at least at the
beginning you know we're upwards of 30
million i know it's trickled down
with the reopening but is there at least
a diff is there some leniency out there now
yeah so credit score is always looked at as as a
foundation of any kind of
application whether it be mortgage or
car or credit card
so so they're always going to be looked
at uh pretty heavily but i do believe that
certain mortgage companies and and
situations out there
we understand what's happening as far as
the pandemic goes so there's certain
reasons for
for you know credit to be a little bit
of miss
but you want to make sure you're having
those conversations before you're
you're not making those payments um
you want to have those conversations
with the credit card companies the
mortgage companies
and if you're gonna do a loan with us or
any mortgage company
give them a call so so you can you know
review that credit report right off the
bat yeah and uh what can peop so you can
protect your credit score by doing
what you said earlier which is calling
your credit card company
or whatever kinds of credit that you may
have calling those companies
is it you know is it one of those things
you can really talk to a live person
and talk with them about because i feel
like when you call these companies a lot
of times you have to go through a lot of
robots to get to a live human being
right you will but but here's the here's the
thing is you're if you're doing business with
them use them use those opportunities to
to figure out what's going on with your
credit report so so if you're having
issues as far as credit cards or
mortgage or paying your mortgage make
those phone
calls make sure you're having
conversations with those representatives
and know how they're going to report to
the credit bureaus
that's the key though as you said in the
beginning 40
of people don't know what their credit
score is i don't think they understand
credit or how it works but the way to
protect it and the way to
affect your own credit report reach out
to these companies figure out how
they're reporting
to your credit uh to the credit bureaus
on your behalf
all right patrick thank you again for go
to blrmortgage.com or call 501 219
9100 patrick we'll talk with you next
time i appreciate your time
chris thanks for having us
