Percentage of St Louisans With Sub-Prime Credit Has Improved to Pre-Housing Bubble Levels

By , on March 19th, 2017

The percentage of people in St Louis with a sub-prime credit score (below 660) has continued to improve since peaking in most St Louis area counties around 2008, according to the latest data released by Equifax.  As the interactive map below shows, 30.63% of the people in the city of St Louis had sub-prime credit in the 4th quarter of 2016.  This is a decline from the 4th quarter of 2008 when it was 38.42% and even down from 2006, the year of the peak of the St Louis housing market, when 34.21% of people in the city of St Louis had sub-prime credit.

As the map shows, from the 5-county core St Louis market, St Charles County has the lowest percentage of sub-prime borrowers at 21.07%.  From the entire St Louis metro area, Monroe County in Illinois has the lowest percentage of sub-prime borrowers at 16.11%.  At the other end of the spectrum, the city of St Louis has the highest percentage of sub-prime borrowers from within the 5-county core St Louis market and Washington County, at 35.09%, has the highest percentage of people with sub-prime credit in the St Louis MSA.

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Nine Credit Score Myths

By , on June 6th, 2014
how long to wait after foreclosure

Tyler Frank,
Paramount Mortgage
NMLS ID 942420

We hear lots of advice these days about how to improve a credit score. However, not all advice is good advice. Here are nine credit score myths that could actually do more harm than good:

Myth #1 – Closing out old, inactive accounts will help your score.
Thirty percent of your credit score is based on your utilization rate – your total balances versus the total amount of credit available to you. Canceling old accounts reduces the total amount of your available credit, changing that ratio. Any balance will utilize a higher percentage of your credit, which will hurt your score.

Myth #2 – Opening (but not using) accounts will help your score.
To improve their utilization rate and, theoretically, their credit scores, some people open as many accounts as they can. According to Rod Griffin, director of public education for the credit bureau Experian, “Your score is affected by how well you manage the credit you do have over a period of time, not by how many credit cards you have or the available balances.”

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1/3 of Americans Highly Unlikely to Qualify for a Mortgage Today

By , on September 29th, 2010

Dennis Norman

According to an analysis of more than 25,000 loan quotes and purchase request by Zillow, nearly one-third of Americans are unlikely to qualify for a mortgage because their credit scores are too low.

Borrowers with credit scores under 620 who requested purchase loan quotes for 30-year fixed, conventional loans were unlikely to receive even one loan quote on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, even if they offered a relatively high down payment of 15 to 25 percent. Nearly one-third of Americans, or 29.3 percent, has a credit score this low, according to data provided by myFICO.com. Continue reading “1/3 of Americans Highly Unlikely to Qualify for a Mortgage Today“