Please help - Buying house need to increase score

[Anonymous]

HI All,

I am buying a house and want to increase my score in the next 3 months atleast by 30-40 points. Right now myscore is 690 and here is the good and bad info i have on my credit report from experian.

Good points:

1. Credit usage is 7%

2. Many accounts paid on time

3. Recent credit card use

Bad points:

1. Serious delinquency. - 2 of my credit cards went into collections and i settled with them in 2014. Accounts show up as paid and payment status details is "LEGALLY PAID IN FULLFOR LESS THAN THE FULL BALANCE". also my last late payment on a different was 26 months ago.

2. Short credit history - My average Age of account is 5.6. Will it help getting on as an authorized user on some one else credit card

3. Installement blances is high  - I took out a lease on new car in May2017. Lease term is 2 years

can anyone help me to increse my score as high as possible before Jan 2018, thats when i get to lock my rate for my new home. Any advice is welcome.

Thanks,

Ryan

[Appleman]

Ryan1, welcome to myFIOC. Do you a recent 3B score from here? It will show you all three of your actual FICO mortgage scores. When I did a refinace last year, the mortgage broker said my 3 mortgage scores were spot on. That will at least give you you realistic idea about your mortgage score which often is very different from a FICO 08 score or FAKO score from credit sesame etc.

Obviously avoid getting new credit.

Continue to pay early or at least on time.

I am not sure about the AU but ensure they have low utilization and a long history with the account if you go that route.

Good luck

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forums, Ryan.

Can you tell us how many credit cards you have now?  And of those, how many of the cards are reporting a positive balance?

Your goal there should be to have all cards reporting except one.  Depending on how many are positive right now, that may get you some points.

Your goal of getting 30 points may be unattainable in the next three months, since the best way to do that would be to get the creditor, in an outburst of good will, to remove all negative marks from those accounts.  That's improbable, and if you were to succeed in getting them to do it you might find that it takes many more months than three.

Paying off most of the car lease could help one of the three scores, but we have conflicting data on which bureau's score it would help, and it would cost a lot of cash that you probably want to use for a down payment.

[RobertEG]

Collections, paid or unpaid, are not excluded until after 7'ish years from the DOFD on the OC account.

I would send the debt collectors requests for their good-will deletion of the reported collections, thus attempting to get them removed prior to their normal credit report exclusion dates.