FICO sells credit reports in Spanish (AP)

By CANDICE CHOI, AP Personal Finance Writer Candice Choi, Ap Personal Finance Writer – Mon Jan 23, 12:10 pm ET

NEW YORK – Credit reports are now on sale in Spanish.

The company behind the most widely used credit scores, Fair Isaac Corp., plans to announce Tuesday that its consumer website and products are available in Spanish for the first time.

FICO says the prices and products are the same as on the English version of the site.

The Spanish language version, which went live for testing in October, was designed to mirror the English language version, said Amber Minson, general manager of FICO's consumer scores. She said the financial educational materials on the site are direct translations as well.

The rollout of the myFICO en Espanol comes at a time when the Hispanic population is expanding rapidly.

Over the past decade, census figures show that Hispanics have accounted for more than half the U.S. population increase and now make up 16 percent of the population, up from 13 percent a decade ago.

To accommodate the growing number of bilingual customers, FICO says visitors to its site can now toggle between the English and Spanish versions of its site. The site is available at espanol.myFICO.com or by clicking the "Espanol" tab in the top right corner of the myFICO.com homepage.

Visitors to the site will want to carefully review their options before making any purchases. FICO offers several products that differ significantly in price, so customers should first determine the level of credit monitoring they want.

The most basic option on myFICO is to purchase a FICO score and report for $20; that includes an explanation of the positive and negative factors affecting the score.

But the site also offers more elaborate credit monitoring services, with monthly packages that require at least three-month subscriptions. A Suze Orman package, which includes three FICO scores and three credit reports, costs $49.95.

If a Spanish translation isn't a must, consumers should take advantage of their rights to a free annual credit report from each of the credit reporting agencies before paying for any credit products. The reports can be accessed at www.annualcreditreport.com.

Those who are in the market for a loan may also get free copies of their credit scores from lenders, depending on the type of loan they're applying for and the terms they're given. Credit reports and scores are also available for free from other sources.

The credit monitoring website CreditKarma.com, for example, offers users unlimited access to free scores and reports. Users do not have to give their credit card information; the site makes money through credit card advertising.

The scores provided by CreditKarma.com are VantageScores, rather than the widely used FICO scores. But a VantageScore can give borrowers an idea of where their credit stands.

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Candice Choi can be reached at www.twitter.com/candicechoi.

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Spanish mortgage defaulters face debt nightmare (AP)

ALCALA DE HENARES, Spain – Inma Rodriguez lost her job, and now that she's defaulted on her mortgage, she's about to lose her home. But the nightmare doesn't end there: Once creditors kick her out, she'll still need to pay back the money she borrowed to buy her house.

It's a mortgage anomaly seen in much of Europe, but especially acute these days in Spain, a nation grappling with an economic crisis triggered by the collapse of a real estate bubble. Since the 2008 property crash, more than 300,000 have been hit by the potential double-whammy of eviction and mounds of mortgage debt.

"It hurts so, so much," says Rodriguez, choking up as she looks up at the ceiling of the home where she's lived for 30 years and raised two children.

Under the terms of her contract, Rodriguez will probably have to pay almost half of her euro200,000-plus ($290,000) bank debt, plus court costs and penalties after she leaves — in stark contrast to the U.S., where defaulters can return the keys to the bank and walk away from their debt.

Defaulters are a small minority in Spain — nearly 98 percent of mortgage holders are up to date on payments. But their plight is generating a wave of solidarity as unemployment soars to record highs: When an eviction appears imminent, demonstrators often gather by the hundreds outside the property to try to block it.

In the rallies, protesters form a human cushion and physically prevent court clerks and bank officials with a locksmith in tow from ejecting residents. The association behind the demonstrations has succeeded about 50 times since 2009, although ultimately it just delays the inevitable.

Last week, the government passed a decree that seeks to address the plight of evicted debtors. It protects more of their wages from being claimed by banks, and changes the way such people's post-foreclosure debt is calculated, to try to trim it.

If the bank manages to sell a foreclosed home, that amount is struck off the remaining debt. But the norm these days is that the property is put up for auction and nobody bids. That has meant the bank then takes over the house for just half its originally assessed value, and wipes the amount off the remaining debt — leaving the borrower still owing a bundle. The legislation passed last week raises the proportion the bank has to effectively pay in the event of non-sale to 60 percent.

The Platform for Mortgage Victims — the association staging the doorstep rallies — wants Spain to usher in U.S.-style mortgage legislation. But the Spanish Banking Association says that would wreck Spain's low interest rate mortgage system: Even now, as loan-shy banks raise rates, they can be below 3 percent, with repayment periods of as much as 40 years and no mandatory mortgage default insurance.

The result, it says, would be banks granting fewer, smaller and more costly loans that are repayable in a shorter time, meaning the nearly 98 percent of mortgage-holders who do make their payments on time would suffer.

"The good payers would be the ones to be hurt," it said.

But Rodriguez, a 56-year-old unemployed cleaning lady, said she fell victim to a rapacious system eager to lend money. She says she can barely read or write and gets confused in the thick gumbo of her financial woes, shared with her estranged husband.

Rodriguez and her husband Manuel, who worked as a painter and carpenter, took out a big second mortgage in 2006 to pay off debts, remodel their 3-bedroom apartment in this town outside Madrid and buy furniture and a new car.

"I did not even know what I was signing," Rodriguez says in a living room with empty shelves and a broken cuckoo clock, as three small Yorkshire terrier yapped at her heels.

Six months after taking out the mortgage, Rodriguez and her husband separated. Since then, she complains, he hasn't chipped in a dime toward the euro1,000-plus a month mortgage payment. She hasn't worked in nearly two-and-a-half years, and even when she did she earned just euro500 a month.

"They made it so easy. So easy," Rodriguez said of the credit. "If we had not bought anything or done all this, we would not owe anything now."

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