How Soon Will My Credit Improve After Negative Accounts Are Removed?

Removing recent negative accounts from your credit report can improve your credit score within 30 to 60 days. However, all credit situations are different, and no one can predict exactly when your credit score will improve or by how much. People engaging in credit repair should set reasonable expectations. Other factors are also important in increasing credit scores, such as the payment status of current accounts. Failure to pay current accounts on time will hurt credit scores even as negative accounts are removed.

Expiring Accounts

Most negative credit information is reported on credit reports for seven years. Federal law considers the information outdated after that, and credit bureaus are supposed to remove it automatically, although that is not always the case. Removing 7-year-old negative accounts may have little to no impact on improving credit. That's because the account is so old that its impact on credit scores is insignificant. Negative credit information affects credit scores the most when first added, with the impact gradually lessening until the information expires and is removed. However, MSN Money reports that the effect of removing particularly old negative accounts is difficult to predict and that some people have experienced decreases to their scores when removing negative accounts appearing on the credit report for more than seven years.

Recent Accounts

Removing negative accounts that are recent can help credit scores. For example, removing a recent charge-off or collections account could provide a boost for scores. A charge-off is an account the creditor closed because of nonpayment. A collections account is an account assigned or sold to a debt collector. Charge-offs and collection accounts cause credit scores to drop when they first appear on credit reports, but quickly removing them can erase the damage.

Pay-for-Delete

The Federal Trade Commission maintains that it is not possible to remove charge-offs, collection accounts and other negative credit information until the accounts expire after seven years. Bankruptcy information remains for up to 10 years. However, some people remove negative information sooner than seven years by entering into a special arrangement with creditors or debt collectors called "pay-for-delete." The debtor agrees to pay a debt in full in exchange for deletion of the negative account from all credit reports. The practice is common, although many creditors do not participate. Pay-for-delete plans can repair credit in just a few months.

Disputes

People who cannot afford pay-for-delete sometimes dispute negative account information on their credit reports and hope that it is deleted during the investigation by the credit bureau. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives people the right to dispute anything on their report, although the law is designed to allow people to dispute mistakes on their credit report. It is the credit bureau's responsibility to conduct a timely investigation and confirm that the information is correct. The negative account information is removed if the credit bureau cannot confirm its accuracy. Disputes deemed frivolous can be ignored by the credit bureaus. Credit reports usually are updated each month as the credit bureaus receive information from creditors.