When you think about all the data and information that credit reporting agencies need to keep track of you can imagine the many possibilities for errors to occur.  Sometimes similar names can get mixed up, such as John S. Smith’s credit information getting putting onto the credit report of his son, John S. Smith Jr.  Other times there is really no concrete explanation for an error; it just simply happens.  For this reason you should pull copies of your credit report from all three of the reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and Transworld) long before ever applying for a mortgage loan. 

Don’t simply look at your credit score, although this is a good starting point to see where you stand from a credit perspective.  It is possible, however, to have a somewhat decent credit score with some derogatory information on your credit report, so you need to look at the entire report to figure out if there are any errors which need to be fixed or instead if there are some delinquent accounts on the report which you had forgotten about or chose to ignore for one reason or another. 

If there are errors on the report you can contact the creditor and the reporting agency in an attempt to get the accounts removed from your credit report.  The credit reporting agencies are required by law to remove the errors from your credit report for a certain amount of time while they do an investigation, but if they find the accounts are not errors than the accounts will be put right back on your report.  You should know that individual consumers are not the primary customers of the credit reporting agencies, but rather they cater to lending institutions. 

You may encounter your fair share of hassles when attempting to get erroneous information removed from your credit report, but it is far better to deal with this long before applying for your mortgage loan instead of waiting for a loan officer to discover the items on your credit report.