“Dear Steve,
Four student loan accounts are coming up as negative on my credit report.
- They are deferred until 06/2014
- They show no amount past due
- They show no “Date Major Delinquency First Reported”
- Under “Date of First Delinquency: N/A
- Two were opened on 6/15/2005
- Two were opened on 3/10/2006
- Under the 81 month repayment history of all four accounts it shows Feb (90) Mar (120) Apr (120), all from the year 2007.
My question is, are the accounts considered negative because of the three month span of late payments, or can deferring payments cause a student loan account to be considered negative? I have technically held the status of “pays as agreed” since May of 2007, so when will these accounts be considered just “installment” rather than “negative” accounts?
Crystal”
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The Answer
Dear Crystal,
Two issues.
First, if these are federal student loans you should consider consolidating them and getting into a program like the Income Based Repayment program to get a payment that fits your income. As long as these are deferred they build interest and the balances go up, way up.
Second, it looks to me as if the issue is not that they are in deferment but that they were reported as delinquent in 2007. In that case they would continue to be reported negatively until about April, 2014.
But the issue is now so old that it carries little weight on your credit report, especially if you have active good credit that is being reported about you.
If you don’t think you were delinquent in 2007 then I would suggest you get a consolidated credit report that shows all three credit bureaus and see which are reporting that. Then dispute those items with the credit bureaus that are reporting.
Please post your responses and follow-up messages to me on this in the comments section below.
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