Does a Soft Inquiry Lower your Credit Score?

[nhamil08]

I am trying to purchase my first house and in the process of applying for a loan. The loan officer told me that I would only have one hard inquiry on my credit and after that it would just be soft checks to make sure its still the same. Well she checked it again and I received an alert that I had another hard inquiry on my accounts.  When I talked to her about it she said that was a soft inquiry into my credit that it would drop my score only 3 points and its no big deal. I have never heard of a "soft" inquiry dropping your score or showing as a hard inquiry on a credit report. I have never applied for a mortgage before so I don't know if this is standard practice or not. I'm just afraid of having a bunch of hard inquiries on my account from applying for this loan. The closing date is about 2 months away and she said this will happen every 30 days, or at least 2 more times.  Is it typical for a soft inquiry to do this to your credit? 

[Guest usctrojanalum]

Seems strange.  Mortgage and Auto loans are an exception - if you had 5-6 hard pulls in a single month because you are rate shopping, usually the CRA's will only count those as 1 hard pull in total. 

My father recently refinanced his mortgage and he was shopping around for the best rate and after we did a pull of his report only showed 1 hard pull for mortgage loan.

[fisthardcheese]

My guess is that the mortgage broker has no clue what she is talking about.  I find that to be typical.  It is true that after their initial credit pull, the remaining reviews are only soft pulls.  Those soft pulls will not affect your credit score.

[MikeW]

Yes, after your initial credit pull, the rest are soft pulls because the system sees you are running your credit by similar vendors.