Will Moving a Lot Hurt My Credit Score?

Whether a member of your family is in the military or you simply want to see more of the world, frequent moves are a fact of life for some consumers. Unfortunately, moving frequently can carry consequences beyond a lot of packing and unpacking. Not only does evidence of your move appear on your credit report, in certain situations moving frequently can hurt your credit score.

Address Record

Each time you move and change your address information with your creditors, those creditors report your new address to the credit bureaus. The credit bureaus keep an extensive record of your past addresses to help identify you. Your addresses appear in the "Personal Information" section of your report. Information in this section does not contribute to your credit score. Thus, simply changing your address has no impact on your credit rating.

Missed Payments

If you neglect to update your address with a creditor or the creditor does not accurately record your new address, the company may continue sending your monthly bills to your old address rather than your new one. This could result in you leaving bills unpaid simply because you did not receive them. Unfortunately, payment oversights that occur as the result of a move still appear as missed payment notations on your credit report. Each payment you miss can drop your credit score by more than 100 points.

Eviction and Foreclosure

If your frequent moves are the result of evictions or a foreclosure, your credit will suffer as a result. Foreclosures are public records that appear within your credit history as derogatory entries while evictions show up on your credit as money judgments if your landlord sued you for unpaid rent. Both evictions and foreclosure records demonstrate to future lenders that you did not reliably pay your rent or mortgage payment and were forced out as a result. These entries result in severe damage to your credit scores.

Broken Leases

Breaking a lease in order to move when the lease does not carry a lease-break provision can also hurt your credit. Unless a lease-break provision is present, you are responsible for paying rent whether or not you live there. Your inability to pay the debt you owe after breaking a lease could result in the landlord turning your debt over to a collection agency or suing you for the balance resulting in either a collection account or money judgment on your record, both of which adversely affect your credit rating.

Long-Distance Moves

If you move out of the country, you may choose to close several of your accounts before you do so. Unfortunately, while closing U.S. accounts may prove convenient, doing so often hurts your credit rating. Keeping your accounts open and frequently updated with timely payments helps you maintain a good credit score. When you close your accounts, you limit the amount of available credit you carry, which lowers your score. Closing positive accounts also causes them to begin to "age off" your report. Once the credit bureaus remove positive accounts, your credit score may suffer as a result.