@Anonymous wrote:
I've had the loan for a year now through a dealer and it's not on my credit report at all. It was a mistake on their part. So now when it shows up on my credit, I've paid on time every time for the year. How much will my score go up now? I'm trying to buy a house.
Did you apply already for the mortgage? Did your lender make any comments about your DTI? I ask because once it reports, it'll report with a monthly payment. Your lender will add that figure into your debt-to-income ratio (DTI) and that could hinder your ability to get a loan, or get a smaller loan to offset that additional expense. YMMV based on your financial situation, but you might not want to have it report. On the otherhand, if your lender wants it to report because you are lacking reporting tradelines, then you'd need it to report to get approved.
Per FICO scoring, the answer is: it depends. Not a clear answer, I know. It's likely you won't see much, if any gain at all. Installment per mix of credit is a very small part of FICO scoring. In some cases, this loan could hinder your score. For example, it is one year old. If all of your other accounts, on average, are older than one year, you could see a drop in score because the average age of all of your accounts (AAoA) would drop with this newer account reporting. A lower AAoA can ding your credit. You'd have to do some math to see the impact. Also, if there's the possibility that this account is less than one year old (e.g. 10 months), then you can see an additional drop once it reports. FICO dings based on new credit and the impact will vary from person to person. It wears off usually by the one-year anniversary though.
