Take this with a large dose of salt, but an online survey by credit agency Experian shows the benefits of, you guessed it, credit reports.
According to Experian's online sampling of 500 homebuyers between April 7 and April 14, 70% of those who knew their credit score felt "significantly prepared to buy a home," compared to 54% of those that didn't.
Perhaps most encouraging to mortgage companies, 62% of future buyers felt confident in their credit and 60% felt financially prepared to buy a home.
Of those surveyed, 58% said they were actively working to improve their credit score to obtain a better home loan interest rate. A larger portion, 74%, recognized the importance of poor credit on a decent interest rate but knowledge of how identity fraud could affect them lagged, at 61% who knew it could disrupt the financing process.
Participants in the survey consisted of 250 people who bought a home within the last year and 250 who planned to buy a home within the next year. The margin for error in the poll was 4.4%.
