What Happens When Hard Inquiries Are Removed From Your Credit Report? (2024)

FAQs

What Happens When Hard Inquiries Are Removed From Your Credit Report? ›

Removing a hard inquiry can raise your credit score if it's recent, but it may have no impact at all. While hard inquiries stay on your credit report for around two years, they only affect your score for about six months to a year. So, removing a hard inquiry over a year old may not raise your score.

Your credit scores might increase when hard inquiries fall off your reports, but it's more likely the event won't have any impact on your scores. Hard inquiries often only have a minor negative effect when they're added to your credit report, if they impact your credit scores at all, and the impact decreases over time.

In most cases, hard inquiries have very little if any impact on your credit scores—and they have no effect after one year from the date the inquiry was made. So when a hard inquiry is removed from your credit reports, your scores may not improve much—or see any movement at all.

Unfortunately, there are no secret ways to remove hard inquiries from your credit report unless they are there in error.

Since hard inquiries affect your credit score and what is found may even affect approval, you might be wondering: How many inquiries is too many? The answer differs from lender to lender, but most consider six total inquiries on a report at one time to be too many to gain approval for an additional credit card or loan.

“Removing inquiries older than 12 months will not affect your score because though they report on your credit for two years, they only affect your score for one.”

For most people, increasing a credit score by 100 points in a month isn't going to happen. But if you pay your bills on time, eliminate your consumer debt, don't run large balances on your cards and maintain a mix of both consumer and secured borrowing, an increase in your credit could happen within months.

There's no concrete answer to this question because every credit report is unique, and it will depend on how much the collection is currently affecting your credit score. If it has reduced your credit score by 100 points, removing it will likely boost your score by 100 points.

A hard inquiry typically only causes credit scores to drop by about five points, according to FICO. And if you have a good credit history, the impact may be even less.

How Do Hard Inquiries Affect Your Credit Score? Hard inquiries can have a negative impact on your credit score, in the short term at least. While a hard inquiry will stay on your credit report for two years, it will usually only impact your credit for up to a year, and usually by less than five points.

Is it illegal to remove hard inquiries? ›

Hard inquiries can't be removed, however, unless they're the result of identity theft. Otherwise, they'll have to fall off naturally, which happens after two years.

Credit repair companies cannot remove legitimate hard inquiries, and they can't remove inaccurate inquiries any more effectively than you can yourself.

If you did apply for a credit account or authorize a hard inquiry, you can't remove it from your reports. It remains on your credit reports as part of an accurate representation of your credit history. If that's the case, it should fall off your reports after about two years.

How does a hard inquiry affect your credit score? A single hard inquiry can shave up to 5 points off your FICO score. However, with the most-used FICO model, all inquiries within a 45-day period are considered as one inquiry when you are “rate shopping,” such as for mortgage, student and auto loans.

A hard credit inquiry could lower your credit score by as much as 10 points, though in many cases, the damage probably won't be that significant. As FICO explains, “For most people, one additional credit inquiry will take less than five points off their FICO Scores.”

Lenders typically perform a hard inquiry on your credit if you're applying for a mortgage, auto loan, credit card or student loan. Space out your credit applications — about every six months — to avoid major damage to your score.

Hard inquiries serve as a timeline of when you have applied for new credit and may stay on your credit report for two years, although they typically only affect your credit scores for one year. Depending on your unique credit history, hard inquiries could indicate different things to different lenders.

Additionally, the amount each hard inquiry drops your score depends on your overall financial health. Most pulls will drop the score by five points or less, but the impact goes up to 10 points. Unless a lender pulls your score multiple times by mistake, you can rest assured the credit drop will only last a few months.

A hard inquiry stays on your credit report for two years but typically won't affect your score for more than a year. Bev O'Shea is a former NerdWallet authority on consumer credit, scams and identity theft.

You could add up to 100 points with tips like paying cards more than once a month and fixing credit report errors. Amanda Barroso is a personal finance writer who joined NerdWallet in 2021, covering credit scoring.