Lenders and other third parties judge your creditworthiness based on many factors and one of them is the inquiries that are on your report. Inquiries allow them to see when and where you’ve searched for credit in the past. There are two kinds of credit inquiries they can look at: hard inquiries and soft inquiries. Hard inquiries can hit your credit report “hard” causing you to lose points in your score. Soft, inquiries do not hit your score as hard.

It’s best to be informed on what hard credit inquiries are, so you can know what may affect your credit score. Here are three things that more than likely show up as a hard inquiry on your credit report:

• Applying for a loan: This is a major one and can include any kind of loan including auto loan, student loan, business loan or personal loan.
• Applying for a credit card: This will also cause a hard inquiry to show up on your credit report.
• Applying for a mortgage: If you’re interested in getting a mortgage, be aware that it will show up on your credit report as  a hard inquiry.

In part 2, there will be a list of other things that may show up as hard inquiries on your credit report.