You want your approach to finding a new home in Plano to be at least somewhat hard-headed and businesslike. The financial stakes are certainly major, and to some extent, much of what your future lifestyle will be like will depend on making a good choice.

This is not to totally discount the emotional component that’s inevitably part of finding your new Plano home. You do want your family to feel good about the final choice—you’ll be moving to the dwelling that will become everybody’s center of operations.

So if your repeat visit begins to convince you that this really is the place you’ve been hoping to find, it’s the appropriate time to take a step back to do your most hard-headed, businesslike projection. This is beyond the back-of-the-envelope kind of calculation (the one that originally guided the price range you gave to your Realtor). This is time to take everything into account to see how well this new Plano home truly fits—on a number of counts.

A new home’s true affordability begins with the banker’s basic price formula—purchase price, mortgage, insurance and taxes. You should also contemplate the cost of having the property inspected and the closing costs (your Realtor® can give you a close estimate). But that’s not the whole picture—a new home’s true affordability also incorporates the difference between your family’s current expense profile and any factors that will change it.

For instance, if the square footage of the new home greater, you can expect that simple maintenance costs will rise proportionately (unless the new home’s condition is a good deal better than your current one). Utility costs may rise, too, if the living space is greater—unless more efficient systems are in place.

If the location will necessitate a change in driving distance or other transportation expenses, they should be taken into account. Does the new place have a significantly larger lawn or other landscaping features? If you have a green thumb and enjoy getting that kind of outdoor exercise (IOW, mowing), that won’t have much effect. If not, you’d better factor in a gardener’s bill.

There is one other element that’s easy to overlook, but accounting for it can eliminate the possibility that the whole move results in an unexpectedly depleted bank balance. Most people who are moving into a terrific new home forget to fully account for the few changes they’ll need to make before the place is perfectly suited their family. These could be minor, like changing out a light fixture that doesn’t fit the dining room table. Or they could be major, like addressing wholesale décor clashes that call for choosing between repainting the walls—or reupholstering— or even purchasing new furniture!

You may have wondered why there are credit repair companies out there, since the credit reporting agencies have to allow any Plano consumer to dispute incorrect line items on their own. The big Credit Reporting Agencies (“CRAs”) even have online systems for challenging erroneous information. The Agency must act speedily to investigate and correct any false information. Soooo, why pay someone else to just fill out their form?

The answer seems to be the same one that makes practitioners in the legal profession permanently in demand: it’s in the fine print. And in this case, it could be that some of that fine print is written in invisible ink.

As you can well imagine, speed is vital when a would-be Plano mortgage applicant finds a credit score that’s lower than expected. The mortgage companies will decide whether you qualify (and how much interest to charge) based largely on that credit score. The actual details about how speedily the CRA must act are all contained in the fine print located in the FDIC’s Consumer Protection regulations, “Procedure in case of disputed accuracy” (6500, § 611). Once you notify the CRA, they have to investigate the validity of your claim and (without charging you a dime) determine within 30 days whether the item is accurate. More fine print describe further protections you have—

PARAGRAPH 2: The CRA has but 5 days to notify the company or person who provided the information about your challenge.

PARAGRAPH 6: The CRA has to provide you the results of their investigation in writing, and, if you’ve asked for it, describe the steps they took to arrive at their decision.

PARAGRAPH 7: If you didn’t know that you had the right to receive the above description, they must furnish it within 15 days after you later request it.

Those sound like pretty solid protections—vitally important, since the CRA can’t just sweep your dispute under the rug, stall, or ignore you altogether. After all, they have to detail in writing how strenuously they worked to protect you! Right?

Except for one problem, which is in PARAGRAPH 8. If the CRA simply drops the disputed item from your current report within the first 3 days, that’s officially considered an expedited dispute resolution. Since the item has been dropped, that might seem to be a solid win. But PARAGRAPH 8 says that if the CRA does that, it no longer has to do anything demanded in Paragraphs 2,6, and 7! It’s as if those protections were written in invisible ink…so that next month, if the company or person just reports the same thing, voila! your credit report might once again go back to Square One. The CRA is supposed to notify you 5 days in advance; but let’s face it, the phrase ‘Catch-22’ comes to mind…or ‘Credit Score Whack-a-Mole’…

What can you do, short of hiring repair agency experts to fix your credit score? Most commentators are in agreement: just stay away from the online dispute forms. Send a registered letter with your dispute, because it usually takes the CRA longer than three days to act on it, so they can’t skip the protections.