Canadian Credit history usefulness in USA

I am moving to US on TN status shortly and do not want sell my current house in Canada till definite progress is made about longer stay in US.

However, I am interested in buying a house in US from my american income. When I called US branch of same bank who gave mortgage in Canada, they informed that Canadian credit history is not exchanged with US counterpart and that I may to build credit history again.

Is this due to current tight credit situation or how others have dealt with getting good deal mortgage when you have 20 % down money available?

Some of it is interchangeable, some of it is not, depends on the credit agency and how their system works. I think the trick is tie them together, so if you have say, an Amex card and you transfer it to the US, they can see that credit history from Canada.

But I'm surprised the bank in the US doesn't care about your Canadian mortgage history if it's the same company. Sounds like HSBC or some other foreign bank.

It has nothing to do with the current credit crunch at all, and more to do with laziness really IMO. Canadians coming to the US have always had a problem in having their Canadian credit rating follow them to the US. The 2 countries use the same 3 credit bureaus, and it really is as simple as them putting a .ca on the end of a url rather than .com, but most any US lender will tell you that your Canadian credit history has no meaning here in the US.

UNLESS, you bank with RBC, or you have a credit card with AmEx. Both will take into consideration credit history, and will even transfer credit cards from one to the other. I was lucky enough when I moved down here that I had an MBNA credit card, which I was able to transfer to an MBNA Amrica credit card. They've since been bought up by Bank of America though, so that won't work anymore. (I have no idea what happened with Canadian customers who had MBNA credit cards when they merged!)

Sometimes it will work to ones advantage, if you have terrible credit rating in Canada, you can start from scratch in the US. However, if you have really good credit, and you move to the US, you all of a sudden have NO credit, which really is a PITA, and lately, more difficult to get credit than it used to be, because of the recent crunch.

IIRC, what I did was get a credit card through the phone company. They had their own brand credit card and used my paying history on the phone bill. Once I had a credit card I appeared in all the credit systems and after that I never had a problem.

A lot of banks offer secured credit cards, which is a similar idea, they give you a credit card based on how much money you have on deposit with them. After awhile they trust you with a regular card.

But this isn't going to help much with a mortgage I suspect. Probably have to rent for a few months then buy.