Published: 11/13/2026, Updated 11/13/2026
Your lease ends in March, and you've spent the last few weekends at open houses. The loan officer you spoke with suggested getting preapproved after the first of the year, which gives you about 90 days. Before a lender pulls your credit, you want to know what's on it yourself. If it's been a while since you looked, that can feel unsettling. The next 90 days follow a clear order, and the first step is one you can take this week.
In the 90 days before you apply for a mortgage, review your credit reports from all three bureaus, dispute information you believe is inaccurate, and consider avoiding applications for new credit. Lenders may consider your credit history along with your income, assets, debts, and debt-to-income ratio. When rate shopping, multiple mortgage inquiries made within the applicable scoring model's shopping window may be treated as one inquiry for scoring purposes, although each inquiry may still appear on your credit report.
Everything else in this process depends on what your credit reports say, so they come first. If you're planning to buy a home, the CFPB recommends checking your credit reports and scores as soon as possible. Checking your own credit does not affect your credit scores, so you can look early and look more than once.
Checking all three matters because each bureau keeps its own report, and lenders don't all pull the same one. As the CFPB explains, one lender may pull your Experian report while another pulls your Equifax or TransUnion report. That's also why the CFPB suggests checking all three if you find an error on one.
Read each report line by line. These are the kinds of entries worth a second look, drawn from the CFPB's review checklist:
The CFPB's printable Credit Report Review Checklist walks through each section of a report, and the CFPB suggests keeping a completed copy with each report you pull. That gives you a dated record to compare against when you check again closer to closing.
Finding a mistake is the main reason to start 90 days out instead of the week before you apply, because a correction takes time. Disputing information on your credit report is free. A credit bureau generally must investigate within 30 days, but the investigation period may be extended to 45 days in certain circumstances, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
Here's how that can play out on a calendar. Say you plan to apply around February 1 and you file a dispute on November 15. A 30-day investigation would generally wrap up by mid-December, and even an extended 45-day review would generally finish by the end of December, about a month before you apply.
Do you need to dispute with all three bureaus? Only the ones that show the error. File with each bureau reporting the mistake and include documents that show why it's wrong. For a late payment you made on time, a bank statement showing the payment date could help. Our guide to disputing credit report errors walks through each bureau's process.
A dispute is about accuracy. If information is found to be inaccurate or cannot be verified, it must be corrected or removed. Accurate information stays, even when it's negative. Our guide to derogatory marks explains how long that kind of information can be reported.
Once your reports are in order, the question most people bring to this stage is about the score itself.
“Before applying for a mortgage, the questions my team hears most are what credit score a lender will look for and how long it may take to be ready.”
Corrine Yzaguirre, Director of Customer Care, ScoreSense
There isn't one number that applies to everyone, because requirements vary by lender and loan type. Your credit is also only part of the picture. For preapproval, the CFPB says, lenders look at your income, assets, debts, and credit record.
Debt-to-income ratio is one of the ways lenders measure your ability to repay. It's your monthly debt payments divided by your gross monthly income. The CFPB gives an example: if you pay $1,500 a month for your mortgage, $100 for a car loan, and $400 toward other debts, your monthly debt payments total $2,000. With a gross monthly income of $6,000, your debt-to-income ratio is 33%. Different lenders and loan products set different limits.
You also have more than one credit score. Different lenders may use different scoring formulas, so a score can vary depending on the scoring model and which bureau's report it's based on (CFPB). Our guide to why your three credit scores don't match explains why. Your scores are calculated from the information in your credit reports, which is why the reports deserve most of your attention over these 90 days.
If a lender does turn down a preapproval request based on your credit score, you're entitled to an explanation. The lender must send you a notice with the credit score it used and instructions for getting a free copy of your credit report, according to the CFPB. That notice tells you where to look first.
This step can be easy to overlook, because new credit offers often look like a good deal in the moment. A furniture store offers 15% off your order if you open a store card today, or a dealer has a financing deal on the car you've been eyeing. Applying for other credit may add a hard inquiry and may affect your credit scores, so the CFPB suggests avoiding new credit right before or during the mortgage process.
What about calling lenders to compare rates? A lender can't pull your credit report if you're only asking about rates, according to the CFPB. If a new credit application can wait until after closing, it's generally simpler to let it wait.
When your reports look right and you're ready to talk with lenders, three steps come up quickly.
Preapproval. A preapproval letter is a statement from a lender that it is tentatively willing to lend to you, up to a certain amount. Prequalification and preapproval letters are based on assumptions and are not guaranteed loan offers. Lenders typically check your credit before issuing one, and the letter can expire, often in 30 to 60 days, so many buyers wait until they're ready to shop seriously (CFPB). When you get a letter, it's worth asking the lender what assumptions it made. The CFPB also points out that getting preapproved earlier in the process can help you spot inaccuracies in your credit reports while there's still time to correct them, which is one more reason the report review comes first.
Rate shopping. When mortgage rate shopping, multiple mortgage inquiries made within the applicable credit-scoring model's shopping window may be treated as one inquiry for scoring purposes. The applicable window can vary by scoring model, and individual inquiries may still appear on your credit reports. Because the window is limited, it can help to keep your mortgage applications close together rather than spreading them over several months.
Loan Estimates. After a mortgage lender receives the six pieces of information that constitute an application, it generally must provide or mail a Loan Estimate within three business days, unless it denies the application before that deadline. Those six pieces are your name, income, Social Security number, the property address, an estimate of the property's value, and the loan amount you want (CFPB). To compare offers side by side, ask each lender for the same kind of loan with the same features. Receiving a Loan Estimate doesn't mean the lender has approved or denied your application yet; it shows the terms the lender expects to offer if you move forward (CFPB). The CFPB's interactive Loan Estimate guide explains each section of the form.
Preapproval isn't the last time your credit comes up. Lenders may pull your credit report just before you close a loan, so the reports you reviewed in November still matter in February. Checking your reports every few weeks between application and closing can help you catch something new, such as an inquiry or account you don't recognize, while there's still time to look into it. If you do find something you believe is wrong, the same dispute process applies: file with each bureau that reports it and include documents that support your dispute.
Mortgage inquiries made within the applicable credit-scoring model's rate-shopping window may be treated as one inquiry for scoring purposes. The window can vary by scoring model, and each inquiry may still appear on your credit reports.
No. Checking your own credit doesn't affect your credit scores.
Check your personal information, each account and its payment history, and any account or inquiry you don't recognize. Dispute anything you believe is wrong with the bureau that reports it.
The meaning of prequalification and preapproval can vary by lender. Both may estimate how much a lender could be willing to lend based on the information reviewed, but neither guarantees final approval or a loan offer.
It may. The CFPB notes that lenders may pull your credit report just before you close on a loan.
Ninety days is enough time to handle the parts of a mortgage application you can check yourself. Pull your reports from all three bureaus early, dispute anything you believe is inaccurate, hold off on new credit, and keep your lender shopping close together. Then keep checking your reports until you close.
If you'd like to review all three reports in one place while you work through that list, here's where ScoreSense comes in. ScoreSense® gives members access to their credit scores and credit reports from all three national credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, in one place, with daily monitoring of their Experian credit report and alerts when ScoreSense receives a reported change.
Corrine Yzaguirre is Director of Customer Care at One Technologies, the company behind ScoreSense, where she has worked since 2011 and leads the team that helps members understand what's on their credit reports.
Sources checked Oct 27, 2026.