What Your Credit Report Must Include
Your credit report needs comprehensive information going back seven years. This includes every credit account you've had, whether it's a credit card, auto loan, student loan, or previous mortgage. The report must also capture all public records like bankruptcies, foreclosures, tax liens, and court judgments. Say you had a credit card that you closed three years ago but made some late payments on it five years back. That payment history will still appear on your mortgage credit report because it falls within the seven-year window. The report must show the creditor's name, when you opened each account, your credit limit or original loan amount, current balance, required monthly payment, and your complete payment history. For accounts with balances, the creditor must have updated the information within the past 90 days.
How Payment History Gets Reported
Your payment history appears in a specific format that shows exactly how many times you've been late at different intervals. Instead of vague terms like "pays as agreed," the report shows "0 x 30, 1 x 60, 0 x 90" which means zero times 30 days late, one time 60 days late, and zero times 90 days late. This detailed format matters because underwriters need to see patterns in your payment behavior. A borrower with "2 x 30" spread over two years looks different from someone with "2 x 30" in the past six months, even though both have the same number of late payments. Some older credit reporting systems use codes like "R1, R2, R3" but these must include dates showing when negative ratings occurred. A report that just says "R1" without context doesn't meet Fannie Mae requirements.
Required Documentation and Verification
Your lender must keep the original credit report in your loan file. This can be an electronic version or fax copy, but it cannot have any white-out, erasures, or alterations. The report must include the credit reporting agency's full contact information and identify which national repositories provided the data. If you're using Desktop Underwriter (DU), your lender must order the credit report from one of Fannie Mae's approved credit information providers. The report needs to support "trended credit data," which shows monthly payment patterns, balances, and minimum payments over time rather than just a snapshot. For borrowers living overseas with APO, FPO, or DPO military addresses, standard credit reports work fine. But if you have foreign credit reports from living abroad, your loan must be manually underwritten since DU cannot process international credit data.
When Debts Don't Appear on Your Credit Report
Sometimes you'll have debts that don't show up on your credit report. This happens with smaller local banks, credit unions, or alternative lenders that don't report to all three bureaus. Your lender must verify these debts separately through written verification. You might have a car loan from a small community bank that only reports to one credit bureau, or a personal loan from a credit union that doesn't report at all. Your lender will need to contact these creditors directly to verify your payment history and current balance. The same applies to accounts marked "will rate by mail only" or "need written authorization" on your credit report. These require separate verification even though they appear on the report.
Why These Rules Exist
Fannie Mae requires this level of detail because your credit report forms the foundation of your loan approval. Underwriters need complete, accurate information to assess your ability and willingness to repay the mortgage. A report missing key accounts or showing vague payment histories doesn't give them enough information to make a sound lending decision. The seven-year requirement balances thoroughness with fairness. It captures enough history to show patterns while not penalizing borrowers forever for old mistakes. The 90-day verification requirement ensures the information is current and reflects your recent financial behavior.
Common Issues That Complicate Credit Reports
Credit reports can get messy when you have duplicate accounts, conflicting information between bureaus, or accounts that belong to someone else with a similar name. Lenders can clean up obvious duplicates and translate codes into plain English, but they cannot delete legitimate negative information. If you've been through bankruptcy, all related accounts must remain on the report. Lenders cannot remove these tradelines even if they're duplicates or seem excessive. The same applies to foreclosures and other significant derogatory events. Credit inquiries from the past 90 days will appear on your report and generate a new inquiry when your lender pulls it. Multiple mortgage inquiries within a short period typically count as one inquiry for scoring purposes, but they'll all show up on the report. If you don't have enough traditional credit history to generate a credit score, your lender may use alternative credit verification methods. This involves documenting your payment history for utilities, rent, insurance, and other recurring obligations that don't typically appear on credit reports.
References
For the official guidelines, see B3-5.2-01: Requirements for Credit Reports in the Fannie Mae Selling Guide.
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Original Fannie Mae Guideline Text
B3-5.2-01, Requirements for Credit Reports (11/05/2025)
Unreported Debts
Assessing Borrower Credit Management Skills
Credit Report Requirements in Desktop Underwriter
Overview
The lender must obtain a credit report for each borrower on the loan application who has an individual credit record. The credit report must be based on data provided by the national credit repositories. Acceptable credit report formats are described in B3-5.2-02, Types of Credit Reports. For credit report requirements in DU see below.
A nontraditional mortgage credit report or other form of alternative credit verification may be used if the borrower
does not have sufficient credit to enable the development of a credit score, or
does not use the type of credit that is reported to credit repositories.
See Section B3-5.4, Nontraditional Credit History for additional information.
General Requirements
Credit reports must meet the following general requirements:
The report must include both credit and public record information for each borrower.
The report must include all discovered credit and legal information that is not considered obsolete under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Although the Fair Credit Reporting Act currently specifies that credit information is not considered obsolete until after seven years, and bankruptcy information after ten years, Fannie Mae requires only a seven-year history to be reviewed for all credit and public record information.
The report must be an original report, with no erasures, white-outs, or alterations. An automated credit report or one that is transmitted by fax is considered to be an “original” report.
The report must include the full name, address, and telephone number of the credit reporting agency, as well as the names of the national repositories that the agency used to provide information for the report.
The credit reporting agency must make responsive statements about all items on the credit report—indicating “unable to verify” or “employer refused to verify,” when appropriate.
Public Records Information
The report must include all available public records information, identify the sources of the public records information, and disclose whether any judgments, foreclosures, tax liens, or bankruptcies were discovered (with these adverse items reported in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and to the extent reported by consumer reporting agencies participating in the National Consumer Assistance Plan).
Acceptable and Unacceptable Changes
Collected credit report information should not be changed. However, it is permissible to delete duplicate information, translate codes to plain language, and make appropriate adjustments to resolve conflicting information to ensure the clarity of the report.
The following types of changes are unacceptable:
deleting tradelines that pertain to a borrower’s bankruptcy,
adding a payment amount to a creditor’s tradeline when the creditor does not require a payment, or
restricting information collection to a shorter time period than Fannie Mae requires.
Credit repositories should only change the information called to its attention by a creditor or a party that is not associated with either the real estate sale or purchase transaction or the mortgage financing.
Required Creditor Information
For each debt listed, the report must provide:
the creditor’s name,
the date the account was opened,
the amount of the highest credit,
the current status of the account,
the required payment amount,
the unpaid balance, and
a payment history.
The report must indicate the dates that accounts were last updated with the creditors. Each account with a balance must have been checked with the creditor within 90 days of the date of the credit report.
Format for Reporting Payment History
All data must be presented in a format that is easy to read and that is understandable without the need for code translations.
The report must list the historical status of each account. This status must be presented in a “number of times past due” format and include the dates of the delinquencies.
The preferred format is “0 x 30, 0 x 60, 0 x 90 days” late. The following formats are also acceptable:
“Rl, R2, R3, …,” if it also gives historical negative ratings, such as “was R3 in 6/05.”
a consecutive numbering sequence, such as “0001000 …,” provided the meaning is clear from the report.
Statements such as “current,” “satisfactory,” or “as agreed” are not satisfactory by themselves.
Inquiries
The report must generate an inquiry that will appear on future credit reports and must list all inquiries that were made in the previous 90 days.
Unreported Debts
If the credit report does not include a reference for each significant open debt on the application, the lender must obtain a separate written verification for each unreported debt. The lender also needs to verify separately accounts listed as “will rate by mail only” or “need written authorization.”
Assessing Borrower Credit Management Skills
The borrower’s credit management skills can be assessed by analyzing repayment patterns, credit utilization, and level of experience in using credit.
Credit Report Requirements in Desktop Underwriter
Lenders are required to request a three in-file merged credit report from one of the credit information providers listed on Fannie Mae's website. The credit report used by DU in the final loan casefile submission must be maintained in the mortgage loan file. A DU observation message will identify all of the credit reports evaluated by DU during the loan submission. The version of the credit report received by DU must meet the requirements in this topic and be one that supports trended credit data. Trended credit data is expanded information on a borrower’s credit history at a tradeline level on several monthly factors, including: amount owed, minimum payment, and payment made.
Note: To obtain a credit report that is compatible with DU loan casefile requirements, the borrower's present address must be within the U.S. or U.S. territories, with the exception of an Army Post Office (APO), Fleet Post Office (FPO), or Diplomatic Post Office (DPO) military address. Borrowers with foreign credit reports must be manually underwritten. See Foreign Credit Reports and Credit Scores in
B3-5.1-02, Determining the Credit Score for a Mortgage Loanfor additional information.
Credit Score Requirements
See B3-5.1-01, General Requirements for Credit Scores, for additional information about credit report requirements related to credit scores.
