Clean Up Your Credit

As a special feature for April, TheStreet.com offers a 20-part series on virtually everything to do with real estate. Today's installment is Part 2.

The minute we hit April, everyone jumps on the spring-cleaning bandwagon. Well, after you finish cleaning out the garage and your closet, be sure to clean up your credit.

Especially if you're going to be looking for a mortgage this spring.

Thanks to the recent subprime fallout, lenders are requiring much more than a pulse to give you a mortgage these days.

A year ago, many mortgage lenders were giving money away with their eyes closed. You didn't need a down payment, lousy credit was not an issue, and you barely had to prove your income.

But that backfired -- duh! -- and surprise, surprise, the folks who had bad credit and no income weren't able to make their mortgage payments after all. Shocking. So lenders have decided to pull in the reins a bit.

Does that mean you're stuck?

"It's too early to tell. We haven't yet seen the affect of a full possible tightening yet," says Dick Gaylord, the president-elect of the National Association of Realtors.

But things are clearly becoming tougher for the less-than-stellar borrower.

"If you're a good-credit, quality borrower who can document his income, has manageable debts, reasonable asset strength and is offering a decent down payment, then you get the gold star," says Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH Associates of Pompton Plains, N.J., which tracks a variety of loan products. Those borrowers will be just fine and won't see any changes in their loan options.