How to Repair Your Credit Report Yourself

Wondering whether it is possible to repair your credit report without having to hire an attorney or law firm? You bet. There will be significant investment of time but you can do it yourself. With the right knowledge and persistence efforts you'll be able to remove negative items and clean up your credit yourself.

Before you get started though, always remember to write everything down. Good records are vital to this process. For this reason, buy some file folders for keeping every communication you have with any credit bureau or creditor. Keep copies of all credit reports, letters, mail receipts and other documents in the folders in case you need it later.

Grouping Negative Items to Dispute

Pick your targets wisely. Every time you dispute, the credit bureaus will look a little harder at your requests. Before writing and sending each "round" of letters examine each one of your credit reports and identify your targets for that round. Generally, the first round should have no more than 3-4 disputes, and subsequent rounds no more than 2-3 disputes.

Separate items that are easier and more likely to be removed in a dispute and one that are relatively more difficult. For example, items older than 7 years are easy but bankruptcies or foreclosures are one of the hardest items to dispute. Simply examine each item on your credit bureau and divide them into three batches.

Steps to Repair Your Credit Report

There are different ways for eliminating different types of negative items. If you have just a few blemishes from several years ago, you might be able to get them removed by contacting the credit reporting agency that reported it. However, if you have a foreclosure and/or bankruptcy, then you will likely need more than one of these credit repair stages.

1. Contacting credit bureaus. When communicating with any credit bureau don't use dispute form on their websites but mail them a hand-written letter instead. Never use the phrase "credit repair" because your goal is disputing items that you believe may not be accurate.
2. Dealing with creditors. In this stage you'll go directly to your creditors to get items removed. This is more expensive and difficult, but very effective for those last few stubborn items.
3. Hiring a professional. If you’ve exhausted everything in the first three stages, and you still have a few stubborn items hanging on, it's time to get a professional credit help involved.

Using the above fast credit report repair techniques, you have all the tools at your disposal to increase your credit scores.