Inquiries - How they affect your credit

Inquiries: Inquiries are caused by companies looking at your credit report for the possibility of issuing you credit. This may be from a credit card company, a mortgage company, or a utility company. Some companies don't place inquiries on your report, but it is rare. The way in which inquiries hurt your credit is that it take 30-60 days for credit to show up on a report, sometimes longer. A credit issuing company is very skeptical of someone who has applied to a lot of credit recently because they don't know what you were accepted for or not. For example, say you applied for 5 credit cards all at once and got all of them. You then have 5 new credit cards which haven't shown up on your credit report, yet the inquires have. So rather than risking giving another credit card to a customer and risking abuse, they would deny you for excessive inquires.

Solution: Inquiries usually fall off within 6-12 months and do not have a lasting affect on your credit. They are not negative marks, but more of an instant guide for the creditors to protect themselves from fraud.

What Causes Bad Credit: