A hard credit hit
doesn't impact your score for 2 years. My info comes from the credit reporting agencies directly, with linked pages stating just that from each of them below. It may
show up on your report for up to 24 months with
one of the reporting agencies (Trans Union), but it certainly won't
impact the score calculated that long.
Let's review them:
FICO is the most-used scoring system out there for credit right now. It considers all mortgage, auto, or rental hard hits
within a 45-day window to be one "lumped" hit (and has done so for many years now). It roughly halves the point costs during lumping, and then again every 3 months, expiring them completely after 12 months. Most single hits range from 1 to 6 points, and at no point would multiple hard hits in a 45 days window in one sector rack up more than 12 points.
Each of the independents (
Equifax,
TransUnion, and
Experian) use a slightly different formula, but none hold points to a hard hit beyond a year. (TransUnion again being the longest hold out.) Experian and Equifax won't even
show a hard hit after 12 months, and don't count them after 180 days. TransUnion shows up to 24 months history, but doesn't
count them after a year. (They use a similar method to FICO's model, and always tend to trend slightly lower than all the rest of the services).
Even then, you can petition to have each agency evaluate and remove some points early in cases like this if you really care that much about the rating hit. Usually they'd fall off your report before you could resolve it. Four hits, even at the max cost of 6 points each is only 24 points, which generally reduces to 12 or less within a month. You can wrack that up for twice as long by missing a
single mortgage or student loan payment, or two CC or auto payments.
As for being a "piece of work", I'm not the one whining because I lost 12 points on my credit score 2 years ago and falsely claiming I'm still being impacted by that issue today. I'm simply putting out what's factually found in 30 seconds by anyone google-ing the words "hard credit hit calculation" and reading the top 3 or 4 non-ad results. :shrug:
Hope everyone had a fun learning experience!