I have found a ton of inquiries on my credit report, how much are they hurting my score?
Inquiries can lower your score between 1 and 5 points depending on the overall content of your report. The more established your credit, the less of an impact a single inquiry will have. And there are some cases where inquiries have no impact at all.
Dispute Unknown Inquiries
If you have inquiries that you don’t recognize you can dispute them, but before you make the effort it may help to know that there are two special cases where even a ton of inquiries will have only a small effect on your scores.
The FICO Exceptions
Both mortgage and auto finance inquiries get special treatment by the FICO credit scoring model. FICO allows you to have as many mortgage or automobile inquiries as you want within any 45 day period and only counts them as a single inquiry. Also, the inquiries will not have any impact on your score for 30 days.
Don’t Panic
So, if you see a ton of inquiries on your report, don’t panic. Take a close look. They might not need any credit repair attention. If there are big blocks of mortgage or auto finance inquiries you can probably afford to ignore them.