What affects your credit score?

Your credit score can be impacted by hundreds of different things. These "things", in the credit score world, are referred to as characteristics. And while there are simply too many to list...they all fall neatly into 5 categories...

How well you're paying your obligations
Your debt
The age of your credit report
Your pursuit of new credit
The diversity of accounts you've had or have

There are some really good (and really bad) articles floating around online that explain what counts and how much it counts.

Here's a great one...

http://www.credit.com/credit_information/credit101/credit101.jsp


And the answer to your question is yes, a broken lease can hurt your credit. The landlord or property mngt company will likely refer the matter to a collection agency, who will then report it to your three credit reports...and then the damage to your scores takes place.

Vanessa,

I agree completely with John here. I would only stress the significance of not just debt PAYMENTS, but of credit USAGE. That is, making all your payments on time isn't enough to keep your credit excellent. You also need to make sure that you don't have high "utilization" on your credit card accounts.

While the significance of this factor will vary based on other circumstances, I can say that If you keep every account balance you have at or below thirty percent of its limit and always make your payments on time, you should do just fine.