Primals

SOMEONE PLEASE WALK ME THROUGH THIS, BECAUSE I'M LOST. I've paid $1,850 in rent every month for seven years. That's $155,400, on time, without missing a single payment. Last month I applied for a mortgage on a small house where the whole monthly payment, with taxes and insurance, would be $1,700. The lender pulled my credit report and said I had a "thin file." Seven years of paying $1,850 on the first of every month, and none of it showed up. Rent payments usually aren't reported to the credit bureaus unless your landlord signs up for a service that does it. So as far as the system can tell, I've never paid for housing at all. Meanwhile a credit card I opened for a free t-shirt got me more points than 84 months of rent. They'll hand you a thirty-year loan if you've borrowed the right way. They won't count the one thing you've never missed. That's not measuring risk. That's measuring whether you've paid the right people in the right way.