Can Moving Affect Your Credit Score - Fragile Removals & Storage

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Can moving affect your credit score?

Keeping a good credit score can be very important in both the short and long-term.

Almost everyone needs to borrow money at some point in life, whether it be through credit cards, personal loans or home loans.

Your credit score can even be assessed by companies when you sign up to a new mobile phone or internet plan, or when you switch your electricity or gas supplier.

Therefore, keeping a healthy score could save you rejections and unnecessary headaches.

A lot of different things can negatively affect your credit score, but what about moving house?.

Let us explore the topic.

Will moving house affect my credit score?

The short answer is: No, moving house within Australia won’t affect your credit score.

When applying for any form of credit, you will always be asked for your address, along with other identifying information like your date of birth.

This information allows the company to access your credit score from reporting agencies and assess whether you can afford their product and whether they are willing to take you on as a customer.

However, your current and previous home addresses appear on your credit report purely as identifying information.

Experian, which is one of Australia’s main three credit reporting bodies, clearly states that “Addresses have no impact on your creditworthiness or your credit scores”.

How to make sure your credit score is not affected when moving

While a change of address in itself will not affect your credit score, there are some things related to a move that could.

If you are planning a move, you need to make sure that you change your address with all of your credit providers as a matter of priority.

Only changing your address with some of your credit providers and forgetting about others could cause issues on your credit report, with a split of accounts between two addresses.

If you receive bills in the mail and do not notify all your credit providers of your change of address in a timely manner, you could also run into issues if you miss a payment on a bill which is sent to your old address.

For example, missing just one credit card repayment could cause your credit score to drop a whopping 22 per cent.

Missed bill payments and loan and credit card repayments also mean additional late payment fees, which can cause further financial pain.

If not moving house, what does affect your credit score?

Missed credit card or loan repayments can have a severe negative impact on your credit score.

But other things that can also affect your credit score include applying for too much credit in a short period of time, late phone and utility bill payments, missed payments with ‘buy now, pay later’ providers, taking out payday loans and court judgements including filing for bankruptcy.