Essentially, my wife and i are going to be trying to get pre-approved for an FHA loan in a couple of weeks. Her current mid-score was 647. However, we had added a $9000 car loan in November. THis was done out of necessity, and we arent going to actually apply for a mortgage until March or so to try and line things up with the end of our lease. The impact on our DTI is positve, as this new car loan is about 90 dollars less per month than the loan it replaced. On the downside, we are going from a balance of about 900 to 9000 as I said. The only other option was to wait until the last minute which would have put the new loan on our credit right about the time we officially apply for a mortgage.
My question is pretty simple. Obviously, in a perfect world, you wouldn't open a new account within 6 months of looking for a mortgage, but in this case, we broke the rule. What' s your best guess, given the admittedly low amount of information, as to what her credit score hit might be? The loan inquiry was already on the report at the time we pulled the 647 mid-score. So now it's just a matter of the impact of the balance getting added.
Not looking for precise accuracy, just some guesses.
