Whether you’re looking to buy a house, lease a car, or get a loan, lenders need to check your credit. To do this, they’ll perform a hard inquiry, which can temporarily lower your credit score. And if someone pulls your credit without approval, it may lead to more inquiries that can harm your credit unfairly. In cases like these, you need to know how to remove hard inquiries.
While hard inquiries are common during credit applications, you’ll want to limit applying for new credit and avoid unauthorized inquiries as their impact stacks up fast.
We’ll explain what hard inquiries are, what causes them, and the steps involved with disputing an unfair or inaccurate hard inquiry.
In This Piece:
Hard inquiries are records indicating that a furnisher reviewed your credit report as part of a credit check. Typically, lenders conduct a hard inquiry before offering you a loan or credit limit increase. Hard inquiries may drop your credit score by a few points. Remember to limit the number of new lines of credit that you apply for at once.
Contrary to popular belief, checking your own credit score won’t lower it. That said, hard inquiries can lower your credit score. If hard inquiries occur without your consent, the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows you to remove those inquiries through a dispute.
You can dispute a hard inquiry if you run into evidence of fraudulent pulls or reporting errors. By asking for the removal of these unauthorized inquiries, you protect your credit score. You can go through the dispute in seven steps:
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recommends reviewing your credit report at least once a year to note unexpected changes. A sudden drop might indicate that unauthorized pulls impacted your credit.
You should also cross reference different credit reports for discrepancies. You can request free copies of your credit reports from Experian®, Equifax®, and TransUnion® at annualcreditreport.com.
Since 2020, and at the time of writing this post, the three main credit bureaus have allowed people to check their credit reports once a week for free as well. To access those weekly reports, you’ll need to request one with each credit bureau individually.
Review the “Hard Inquiries” section of your report for signs of a credit check you didn’t authorize. If you see anything suspicious, be sure to:
Contact the furnishers responsible for illegitimate inquiries. In some cases, these lenders will remove the reports without conducting a formal dispute. To stay prepared, make sure you:
You can file a formal dispute if the lender doesn’t respond to your request. Even if a furnisher rejects or ignores your request, you have grounds to push back. To get the ball rolling, you should:
You must include all relevant information when drafting your formal dispute letter. This may include:
With all the documentation in order, you can submit your dispute to a credit bureau. While you can contact bureaus by phone, mail, and online submissions, leave a stronger paper trail.
For credit disputes by mail:
For credit disputes by online submission:
For credit disputes by phone:
Credit reporting bureaus are required to resolve your dispute within 45 days. During this time, credit agencies will contact furnishers to determine whether the credit check was fraudulent. The Fair Credit Reporting Act also holds that businesses reporting to credit bureaus must investigate disputes.
If a credit agency can’t verify the inquiry, they should remove it from your report. On the other hand, they may keep the inquiry if the furnisher insists it’s valid. If this occurs, you can:
Hard inquiries impact 10% of your FICO® credit score. However, its exact impact on the total score depends on:
A few hard inquiries won’t lead to any long-term consequences. Additionally, the amount each hard inquiry drops your score depends on your overall financial health. Most pulls will drop the score by just a few points111. Unless a lender pulls your score multiple times by mistake, you can rest assured the credit drop will only last a few months.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to worry about hard inquiries impacting your credit score. It just means you’ll want to be mindful of the number of applications you submit and when you submit them.
Lenders perform hard inquiries to check your financial standing. Depending on your credit score, they may find you more trustworthy and offer loans, credit limit increases, or rentals. In general, there are seven reasons you’ll see hard inquiries on your credit report:
Still have questions about hard inquiry removal and when hard inquiries fall off? We have the answers you need.
If you applied for credit and authorized a hard inquiry from a lender, you can’t remove it from your credit report. Hard inquiries only leave your credit report if:
Removing a hard inquiry can raise your credit score if it’s recent, but it may have no impact at all. While hard inquiries stay on your credit report for around two years, they only affect your score for about six months to a year. So, removing a hard inquiry over a year old may not raise your score.
Because of the timing, a hard inquiry falling off a credit report usually doesn’t boost the score, either. By the time an inquiry ages off, its impact on your credit score has probably passed.
There isn’t a hard and fast limit to the number of hard inquiries that can be on your credit report. One or two credit pulls may only drop your credit score for a short time, but many hard inquiries in a short time frame may cause worse damage.
As a general rule, don’t apply to multiple lenders all at the same time. If you handle one reasonable credit application at a time, you’ll maintain a healthy score.
Hard inquiries stay on your credit report for around two years. However, you can still improve your credit score even if hard inquiries are on your report. Make payments on time, avoid applying for more loans or lines of credit until your score recovers, and try to pay down the debt you already have.
It depends. For many people, a hard inquiry can cause your score to drop by just a few points. However, if you have multiple hard inquiries close together, your score may drop more.
It’s possible to check your credit score without causing it to drop. When you do a personal credit check to see where your score is, it’s considered a soft credit pull, which won’t hurt your score. And if a lender performs a soft credit check to see if you should be preapproved for a loan or a credit card, it won’t hurt your score either.
While a few hard inquiries won’t tank your credit, they can point to financial risks. Learning the basics of cleaning your credit report and reviewing hard inquiries helps keep you aware of your credit and keep your accounts safe from fraud. While going through a dispute involves some stress, the peace of mind you get from going through the process pays for itself.
With the risk of an unauthorized inquiry, it pays to stay on top of your credit score. You can find the credit monitoring tools you need with ExtraCredit. With our service, catching errors and preventing identity theft has never been easier. You can also request a free credit report card to see where your score stands.