Building credit for a home loan takes a bit more of a focused plan than financial improvement for other goals. If you’re looking to apply for a mortgage you want to have a detailed plan, with a time line and small goals marked along the way. This focus doesn’t mean this has to be difficult, even for the worst financial history, in fact, having this plan will really simplify things and take the worry out of your hopes and dreams of owning real estate.

The first thing you need to do is get a copy of your credit report. This is where your score comes from, so anything you need to work on is listed there. When you look at at this page you first want to look it over for mistakes. Just because you have made past mistakes doesn’t mean the companies haven’t, too. Common mistakes include them marking accounts as overdue or even just open that are currently paid or closed; they’ll also often mark your credit limit as lower than it really is on some of your cards. One of the factors in calculating your score is the amount of credit available to you versus the amount you actually use.

There are two types of payments that make up your financial history, revolving (credit cards) and installment (loans). You want to make sure you have a good history built up with both of these types of payments to get a home loan. If you don’t have much of a history with loans you’ll want to consider getting a small loan for a car or other use and be sure to make the payments in full each month. You’ll want this to be small and take approximately a year to pay off. This will show you can handle making payments and paying something off in full.

The most important thing to keep in mind when building credit for a home loan is to make sure you make all of your payments on time and check your report at least once a year, if not more often.