Will my credit score drop when you pull my credit for a mortgage?

It’s one of the first questions I get, usually in a slightly worried tone, and it’s a fair one. You’ve spent years building a decent score and now someone wants to go and poke at it.

So let’s take it apart properly.

There are two kinds of credit check

Only one of them touches your score.

A soft inquiry happens when you check your own credit, or when a lender pre-screens you for an offer you didn’t ask for. Soft inquiries are invisible to other lenders and have no effect on your score whatsoever. You can check your own file as often as you like.

A hard inquiry happens when you apply for credit and a lender pulls your file to make a decision. That’s what happens with a mortgage application. It’s recorded, other lenders can see it, and it can move your score — typically by a handful of points.

Shopping several lenders doesn’t multiply the damage

This is the part people get wrong, and it matters, because the fear of it stops people comparing options at all.

Canadian scoring models are built with mortgage shopping in mind. Several mortgage-related inquiries made close together are treated as a single event rather than as evidence you’re applying for credit everywhere at once.

Multiple inquiries for the same purpose within a certain period of time are generally counted as one inquiry.— Equifax Canada, on how inquiries are scored

The length of that window depends on the scoring model — commonly somewhere between fourteen and forty-five days. The practical takeaway is the same either way: do your comparing in a concentrated period rather than spread across months, and it registers as one shopping exercise.

This is also why working through a broker is gentler on your file than approaching lenders one at a time. One application, one pull, submitted to whichever lenders make sense — instead of a fresh inquiry at every bank branch you walk into.

How long an inquiry stays on your file

A hard inquiry generally remains visible on a Canadian credit report for around three years, depending on the bureau. Canada has two: Equifax and TransUnion, and lenders don’t always use the same one.

But visibility and influence are different things. The effect on your score fades much faster than the record disappears — most of it is gone within a few months. A two-year-old mortgage inquiry sitting on your report is not what’s standing between you and an approval.

The thing that actually damages applications

In practice, the credit pull is almost never the problem. What causes trouble is what people do after it.

Between approval and closing, many lenders re-check. A file that looked fine in March can fall apart in May because of something that felt unrelated at the time:

• Financing a car or furniture. The classic. New house, new sofa, new problem — a new monthly obligation changes your debt servicing ratios.
• Opening a new card, including a store card offered at a till for a discount.
• Running balances up close to their limits. How much of your available credit you’re using is a heavyweight factor.
• Closing an old card. Feels tidy, shortens your credit history and cuts your available credit. Both hurt.
• Missing any payment at all, on anything, including a phone bill that went to an old address.

What to do before you apply

Pull your own report first — it’s a soft inquiry, so it costs you nothing. You’re looking for accounts you don’t recognise, balances that look wrong, and anything showing as unpaid that you’ve actually settled. Errors are more common than people expect, and they take time to correct, so finding them early is worth it.

Then have the conversation before anyone pulls anything. A decent broker can tell you a great deal from a conversation about your income, your debts and your down payment — long before a credit check is needed. If something in your file needs attention first, you want to know that before an application, not during one.

The bottom line

Yes, a mortgage application creates a hard inquiry, and yes, it can move your score a little. It’s a small, temporary effect, and the system is deliberately built so that comparing your options doesn’t punish you for it.

Being too nervous to let anyone look at your credit is far more expensive than the few points the look might cost you. The mortgage you don’t compare is the one you overpay on for five years.