Credit Score Blues? Here’s How to Build Credit, Fast, Before You Buy a House

You’ve decided the time has come to buy a house. You’ve saved your down payment, selected the perfect real estate agent, and figured out exactly what city or neighborhood you want to call home.

But there might be one very important factor you’ve forgotten about, and it can affect not only your viability as a buyer, but also your spending power, interest rates, and attractiveness to both sellers and mortgage lenders: your credit rating.

According to credit reporting agency Experian.com, a credit score — also known as a FICO® score — of 700 and above is considered “good.” Anything in the 800 range is considered “excellent.” The average score for most consumers falls between 680 and 750.

Credit scores can affect many areas of your life. They not only show lenders your ability to pay your bills on time, but also how much debt you have and how much additional debt you can potentially carry. A good credit rating can smooth the way to a relatively painless mortgage loan approval, while a bad rating can make it difficult to get a loan at all.

Building good credit can feel insurmountable — but even if you don’t have a perfect score, or if you have no credit at all, with a little help from the experts, you can build up your credit fast before you buy a house and improve your scores surprisingly quickly.

We’ve researched some of the best and fastest ways to build credit, talking to both real estate professionals and consumer credit specialists to create a checklist of some of the best ways to build your credit fast before you buy your home and improve your overall credit rating.