Collection item not on credit report?

[benneh]

I am in need of an advice. I have a few things that are in collection. I pulled my credit report from all three agencies and none of the collection items are on the report.
What does that mean? I was thinking of buying a house.
Will these items show up? I got the report from annual credit report.

[msomnipotent]

Just because something is with a collection agency, doesn't mean the agency reported it to the bureaus. Do you have payment plans for these debts? The agencies I am familiar with didn't report if a payment plan was in good standing. Or it could be that they just didn't get around to reporting them and maybe you should either set up payments plans or go buy that house before they are reported!

[GoodSteward]

or go buy that house before they are reported!

I'm pretty sure legally you are not supposed to do that. One of the papers you sign states you are not holding out any other debts or things not reported in your credit. If they find out you had collections and it wasn't reported then that could come back on you. They do a background check I think, to verify. The good news is that your score isn't affected by the collections since they have not reported, so the rate will as if you don't have any collections. If you are currently paying the collection then I doubt it will hurt you when you report it.

[msomnipotent]

I'm pretty sure legally you are not supposed to do that. One of the papers you sign states you are not holding out any other debts or things not reported in your credit. If they find out you had collections and it wasn't reported then that could come back on you. They do a background check I think, to verify. The good news is that your score isn't affected by the collections since they have not reported, so the rate will as if you don't have any collections. If you are currently paying the collection then I doubt it will hurt you when you report it.

Yeah, that was tongue-in-cheek.

I'm not aware of any sort of background check that would show anything a collection agency was holding if it wasn't reported to the bureaus, so there is no way to verify. My point was that OP needs to get this settled one way or another before it affects the credit report.

[Nutria]

Just because something is with a collection agency, doesn't mean the agency reported it to the bureaus.

Especially if the debt was from a non-financial institution.

Still (long ago, in the bad old days) when one of our debts went into collection, it showed up on our CR. Don't know how long it took, though.