Selling Your Oklahoma City House? An Obscure Advance Move

Long before you’ve decided to put your own Oklahoma City house up for sale, there is at least one step you can take that might make the whole project more financially rewarding. It’s a step that might seem to be counterintuitive—but when you consider the bigger financial picture, it makes perfect sense.

The action in question has to do with your own credit—which may not seem to be relevant when it comes to selling your Oklahoma City house. After all, it’s the buyer's credit that seem to be what matters—not your own credit, right?

That’s only true as far as it goes. The fact is that for the majority of homeowners selling your house is only Step One. Step Two comes with the purchase of your next residence. Especially if your own financial profile is perfectly acceptable (and bound to become even more solid once you’ve banked the gains from the sale of your current property), it’s a simple truth that an even higher credit score will earn offers of a lower mortgage interest rate on that next house. Even a small percentage point increment can result in a big difference in “cash out” over the long haul.

So, what advance steps can you take to improve your own credit? Aside from those that everyone knows, like paying credit cards on time and, of course, doing likewise for your current mortgage, one counterintuitive step might be to take out a personal loan—even if you don’t really need it!

I don’t offer financial advice, so this would be something you would run by your own CPA or other trusted financial counselor. But as J.M. Simon and Brady Porche write, if you want a top FICO score (“the kind that gets you the best rates, the highest limits”) you’re “going to have to mix it up a bit”—meaning build a credit history that shows responsible use of different kinds of credit. The types of credit used is, in fact, one of the five factors that lenders measure—and it’s said to account for about 10% of a consumer’s FICO score. So establishing a personal loan, financing a retail store purchase, or opening some other previously untapped variety of credit can result in an improved score. Since that can take a while to register, advance planning pays off.

Selling your Oklahoma City house is one of the major milestones in any family’s life—one that deserves careful preparation and implementation. It’s my job to help make sure that all happens—beginning when you give me a call!