• United States
  • Find Experian Worldwide Locations

When will paid accounts be updated?

Ask Experian

E-mail Address
City
State
Question
Your privacy and the information collected here.

Do you have a question about consumer credit? You may find an immediate answer by using the search engine. If you can't find what you're looking for, please fill out the form, being as specific as possible.

Please note: The Ask Experian team cannot respond to each question individually. However, if your question is of interest to a wide audience of consumers, the Experian team will include it in a future column.

RSS icon  Subscribe to RSS feed

Credit Advice

Topics addressed on February 6, 2008:

When will paid accounts be updated?

Dear Max,

My wife and I have paid off a lot of our debt, and we would like to know how long it takes to update our credit reports on one or more bureaus. We are planning to buy a house or refinance a car loan but want our credit to look better before we do that. We just don't know when the changes will take effect.

- RGR

Dear RGR,

Your accounts will be updated when the lender reports the new information, usually at the end of the billing cycle.

If you made the payments at the beginning of the billing cycle, it could be 30 days to 45 days before the information is updated. If you made the payments near the end of the billing cycle, the updates could be made much sooner.

Generally, I advise people to allow two billing cycles, about 60 days, before getting a new credit report. That will allow plenty of time for the new information to appear in your credit report. It also will allow a little bit more time for your credit history to stabilize after the changes.

Credit scoring systems can be negatively affected for a short time after large changes in your credit history because the changes create instability in the credit history. After major changes, like paying off several large debts, it isn’t immediately clear what those changes represent in terms of risk.

After a billing cycle or two with continued on time payments it becomes evident that the changes were positive and that no negative activity is happening, such as suddenly taking on large amounts of new debt, and credit scores typically bounce back up.

Thanks for asking.

  • © 2009 Experian Information Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.