How to Remove a Repossession from Your Credit Report

When you think repossession, you probably imagine a car being towed away in the middle of the night, the distressed owner left without a ride to work the next morning. You also probably never thought it could happen to you.

Any object you haven’t paid for in full can be repossessed after the payments you promised start arriving late or not at all. Usually when you sign a purchase or credit contract you agree that the seller can repossess the property if your payment does not arrive before the expiration of a grace period. In these cases, it is legal for a “repo agent” to “recover” the property, whether it’s a car, another type of vehicle, or any object that you are making payments on. After a repossession, you’ll be left without the object and with a significant impact to your credit report.

How much will having a repossession credit report affect your credit score? That’s hard to tell – it depends in part on where your credit score was prior to the repossession. One thing that’s certain, however, is that it could show up on your credit report for the NEXT 7 YEARS! This is something that will not go unnoticed by creditors when they examine your credit report in the process of considering your application for anything from a credit card to a vehicle lease to home loan.

Waiting for repossession to disappear from your credit report is not your only option, however. If you want to remove repossession from your credit report, there are certain steps you can take. First confirm that a repo entry on your credit report is actually there. There’s a slim chance that the property owner never reported it. If it appears, you can dispute its accuracy with the creditor and the credit bureaus, and they are legally required to verify the repossession. You may be able to remove repossession this way. If they are not able to verify within a certain time limit, they must remove the repossession entry.

Luckily, it may be easier to remove an older repossession because time works in your favor when it comes to verification. Older items are more difficult to verify, but subject to the same verification requirements. If it cannot be removed this way, another option would be to try to make arrangements with the creditor, asking if they will remove the repo upon receiving full payment.

There are also companies such as Lexington Law that can provide expert advice when it comes to removing negative or inaccurate items from your credit report. They can help you fix your repossession credit report and remove repo entries. Lexington Law can put years of experience to work for you and before you know it (much faster than 7 years!) you could find that you no longer have to deal with the long lasting implications of having a repo credit report.