Authorized user

[Anonymous]

Good morning,

My wife and I are dying to get approved for a VA home loan, and I am so close to the 620 I need to get pre-approved.  I am currently sitting at TU 611, EX 608, EQ 605 per CCT, effective 4/3/2017.  I currently have a NFCU line of credit sitting at $201/1000 (paying on-time), a Mastercard sitting at $3400/5000 (closed due to bad payment history), and a car payment with chase with $4k remaining, paid on time.  Because we have the closed mastercard with a balance, my utilization reports as > 360%

My wife never had any credit.  Her reports literally had nothing on them except for a student loan she paid off many moons ago.  She had no scores. She just got approved for the BoA $500 platinum secured card w/cash back rewards.  If she was to add me as an authorized user:

1.  Would it help or hurt me? 

2.  Would I get a hard hit on my report?

3.  Since I am going for a mortgage, would you advise I wait it out or go for this?  I do not want this to screw up the mortgage process.

Thank you!

[MrTom]

Is the credit scores you are listing your Mortgage scores?  Sometimes your mortgage scores can be higher then FICO8, sometimes lower.  But in the past whenever I looked at my mortgage scores they were higher then my FICO8.  I would look at this before trying to seasoning your credit report, because the underwriter may not even allow a AU on the report to be apart of the score.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Good morning,

My wife and I are dying to get approved for a VA home loan, and I am so close to the 620 I need to get pre-approved.  I am currently sitting at TU 611, EX 608, EQ 605 per CCT, effective 4/3/2017.  I currently have a NFCU line of credit sitting at $201/1000 (paying on-time), a Mastercard sitting at $3400/5000 (closed due to bad payment history), and a car payment with chase with $4k remaining, paid on time.  Because we have the closed mastercard with a balance, my utilization reports as > 360%

My wife never had any credit.  Her reports literally had nothing on them except for a student loan she paid off many moons ago.  She had no scores. She just got approved for the BoA $500 platinum secured card w/cash back rewards.  If she was to add me as an authorized user:

1.  Would it help or hurt me? - Not a whole lot of either unless she was to default on the card and then it would hurt you a lot until you removed yourself as an AU

2.  Would I get a hard hit on my report? - No

3.  Since I am going for a mortgage, would you advise I wait it out or go for this?  I do not want this to screw up the mortgage process. - Given #1, I would advise just to wait it out.  Not going to make a whole lot of difference either way but no reason to even risk questions by the underwriter,

Thank you!

---

 Also as MrTom alludes to, those scores from CCT are not your mortgage scores but FICO 08 scores and there can be a huge difference between them.  The only way to get your scores are either thru a loan application and having the loan officer tell you or by paying for a full 3 bureau report from here, MyFICO.  I highly recommend the latter if applying for a mortgage.

Additionally, I'm moving your thread to the mortgage forum so that you can get additional advice.

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

A 620 score isn't necessarily the minimum score needed for a VA loan.  It will open your options up to more lenders, and will result in better interest rates, but VA loans have been approved with lower scores.  That being said, if you can pay down the Mastercard you should be able to improve your scores.  Also would seem that there could be some negative marks on credit too, and when it comes to qualifying for a mortgage your credit history is equally as important as your credit scores are.  In general, you'll want to have at least 12 months of clean credit when you apply in order to have a good chance of getting approved.  If you've been working with a loan officer then you should go over your credit history with them and ask if it's in good enough shape in their opinion.  You can also post further details here and get feedback.