Denied a mortgage over your credit — what to do, in order

This situation has a feature that makes it unlike other credit disputes: you are usually on somebody else’s clock. A purchase agreement, a rate lock, a closing date.

The statutory timelines were not designed around that, which is why the order matters.

1. Get the notice, and read what it names

Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681m(a), a lender taking adverse action based on a consumer report must give you notice identifying the agency that furnished the report — name, address, telephone number — plus a statement that the agency did not make the decision, the score used if any, and notice of your right to a free copy and to dispute.

The agency it names may not be Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion. Mortgage lending typically uses a merged report from a reseller, and the reseller may be who is named. That is the single most confusing thing about this situation. See the reseller in the middle.

If you were approved but at a worse rate, look for a risk-based pricing notice instead — see you were approved, on worse terms.

2. Claim the free report within 60 days

Section 1681j(b) gives you a free disclosure on request within 60 days of the § 1681m notice. Separate from your annual entitlement.

Request it from the agency named. Do it now, not at day 55.

3. Get all three single-bureau reports too

Order the full file disclosures. You need them to answer the question that determines everything else: is the error at a source bureau, or was it introduced in the merge?

Ask for the file disclosure under § 1681g, not a score product. See how to read a credit report.

4. Compare, line by line

Put the merged report beside the three single-bureau reports and work through account by account. What you are looking for:

• An item on the merged report that appears on none of the three — an assembly problem.
• An item on one bureau only — the lender may have keyed on it; dispute at that bureau.
• Different balances, dates, or statuses for the same account between reports.
• Accounts that are not yours at all — see mixed files.
• A wrong date of first delinquency on a collection, which affects whether it should be reported at all. See the date that controls the clock.

5. Dispute in the right place — sometimes both

If the error is at a source bureau, dispute there. That is what triggers the furnisher’s duties under § 1681s-2(b), and it is the route with the most force behind it. See disputing with the bureau, the furnisher, or both.

If the error was introduced in the merge, § 1681i(f) applies to the reseller. Within 5 business days of the dispute notice, and free of charge, the reseller must determine whether the item is inaccurate because of its own act or omission. If so, it must correct or delete within 20 days. If not, it must convey the dispute and all relevant information you provided to each agency that supplied it.

If you are unsure which, dispute in both places. They are not mutually exclusive and the clocks run in parallel.

6. Tell your lender what you are doing

Not a statutory step, and often the one that saves the transaction. Lenders deal with this regularly and may have options — a rapid rescore process through the reseller, an extension, a re-pull after correction. They cannot offer any of it if they do not know.

The timeline problem, stated honestly

The ordinary reinvestigation period under § 1681i(a)(1)(A) is 30 days, extendable by 15 if you supply relevant information during the window, plus 5 business days to send you the results.

That is up to 50 days. Rate locks are often 30 to 45.

Which produces three practical rules:

• Start the same day you get the notice.
• Send your best documentation the first time. Supplying more later can extend the period — see the 30-day clock.
• Use the reseller route where it fits. Five business days plus twenty is faster than the bureau route for an error the reseller itself introduced.

If it comes back verified

Ask for the description of the procedure. Under § 1681i(a)(6)(B)(iii) and (a)(7), the agency must, on request and within 15 days, describe how it determined accuracy — including the name, address, and telephone number of any furnisher it contacted.

That is fast by the standards of this statute, and it gives you the furnisher’s contact details for a direct dispute. See what is left when the dispute does not work.

Keep everything

The application, the notice, every report with its date, every dispute as sent with proof of delivery, and everything received with postmarks. If this transaction fell through over something that was wrong, the record of what the file said at the time is the only evidence that will exist. It cannot be reconstructed later. See building a record that holds up.

We do not tell you whether an error caused a denial, whether anyone violated anything, or what any of it is worth. Those depend on documents. What is general is the order, and that starting on day one rather than day twenty is most of the battle.