About 5% of a sample group of 4.3 million consumers had a debt that was sold to a debt-buying company, according to a whitepaper recently issued by VantageScore.
The whitepaper attempted to illustrate what would happen if those debts sold to debt-buyers, known as “sold-derogatory” tradelines, were removed from consumers’ credit scores. The conclusion of the report is that removing those particular items would not significantly increase the credit scores of consumers.
One reason for that is because the overwhelming majority of consumers who have had one of their debts purchased by a debt buyer are also in collections on other debts.