 TITLE: How Does a Foreclosure Affect Credit? CONTENT: How Long Does a Foreclosure Stay on Your Credit Report?\n-------------------------------------------------------\nA foreclosure entry typically appears on your credit report within a month or two after the lender initiates foreclosure proceedings. The entry remains on your credit report for seven years from the date of the first missed payment that led to the foreclosure. After that, it is deleted from your report.\nForeclosures have a considerable negative impact on credit scores, but as with all derogatory credit report entries, the number of points by which they'll lower your score depends on many factors. These include what your score was before foreclosure and the number of negative entries on your credit report.\nForeclosures typically occur only after you miss at least four successive monthly payments (120 days of delinquency). Missed payments bring down credit scores more than any other negative entries, so your credit scores typically will have dropped significantly even before a foreclosure appears on your credit report. (If you are missing payments on other debts as well, this has a compound effect.) END