@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
It's possible he suffered a drop in score because his utilization decreased. Also, if that account had a long history, he lost credit age as well. Both are two big things FICO considers when looking at credit scores.
Our lender is not requiring all of my collections to be paid, BUT, they did suggest that I take care of them as it will help my score. I have 2 apartment collections, a charge off from a repossession, 2 defaulted student loans, and 4 medical collections.
I was hesitant to do anything about it, and questioned our lender SEVERAL times because it didn't make sense to me. AND all of these collections are scheduled to fall off my report between August 2017-February 2018.
After many discussions with the lender, and realizing I need to look at the bigger picture and clean my credit if anything, I gave in. The collections that needed to be handled with some type of payment totaled $3,830. I settled it for $1,340. My other collections total $7,610, all of which will fall off by July.
What I've come to learn, if you trust your lender, then do what they advise. Their opinions aren't ideas being bounced off the wall. They've seen hundreds of mortgage apps, and some have simulators that can manipulate your score to see what will happen when you resolve negative items.Thank you so much, you've actually made me feel a little more hopeful lol. His TU mortgage score went up after they were removed, so that's why at the time I didn't suspect any damage to the other mortgage scores. And of course now I feel like if I added them again, his TU mortgage score would just drop again, not solving anything. I thought about the age of the accounts but he's an authorized user on other cards of mine that were opened at the same time. I don't know if that means anything or not, the whole thing is confusing. One card is over 50% utilization and the other is currently over limit. I really thought removing him would help overall.
One of my cards that the previous lender told me to remove him from is an even older account with excellent history. My Victoria's Secret card with an $1150 limit, 0 balance. Should I go against her advice and not remove him? I removed from the two others she asked, those ones aren't as old and even though the history is great with those as well they have small limits.
We will happily settle the Verizon collection but I'm worried about settling anything else because we'll be using up our savings, 2100 right now in the savings account but we'll also be applying for down payment assistance which we qualify for. So that concerns me because I know they don't want to see an empty savings account.
Tomorrow we'll be calling the new lender and I really hope he can help us out. He was actually supposed to call us this morning but never did. I assumed he was busy, his secretary said he was yesterday, but now that I saw what my husbands middle score dropped to I hope he didn't just pass on us. I'm trying to stay optimistic but I'm in panic mode. I worked so hard on his credit and when it finally looked like we were in a good place this happens. And then the medical collection showing up. It's all so stressfulIf he as a credit card over the limit that will cost you 20-30 points immediately. I would sign him up for Myfico while your in this process so you can see the scores for yourself, see the alerts as things change and know where you stand. My opinion is that resolving collections is always a good idea. They may not always result in an increase in credit score but a loan officer is going to view someone with a history of collections that are all resolved very differently than someone with multiple collections that are still out there. If you were a loan officer which customer would you rather loan money to? My overall opinion of your situation is your not ready to move forward. Going through a home purchase is very stressful even when you don't have these factors working against you.
Personally I would take a step back, resolve these collections, pay down all of the credit cards to under 10% each, build more savings and get your husbands scores substantially above 620 and than take a shot at it when you can put your best foot forward. Bringing down the utlization alone is a great way to bump scores. Other than that getting collections removed is another so I would try Pay for Deletes on all of them rather than just paying them and having them report. Most collections agencies don't want to do that but you might get lucky and get one or two to go along which could make a huge difference.
Lending standards have become far more strict because new banking regulations since the forclosure crisis have been put in place to try and ensure that folks don't get qualified for a mortgage they cannot handle. In this environment you really can't have multiple things working against you. If your husband had all of these other issues taken care of and solid scores they would not worry about how long he has been at this particular job but that combined with everything else makes them concerned.
He doesn't, I do and he was an authorized user. It's a high interest card so even though I've been paying more than above the minimum payment, it's slow to pay down without a large chunk of money. Other than that and my Wal Mart card that I also removed him from, we've paid off all our cards. Not all of them have reported so some still show very small balances on his account. We do have MyFico for him and that's how I've been tracking everything.
We've been working on his credit since his small lapse in work in 2013, so his history has been excellent since. I'm not sure what more I can do except tackle the other collections with PFD so if that's what the lender suggests, that's what we'll do. I don't want to settle the medical one because he wasn't liable for it. He had insurance so that's how I got it off his report when it showed up two years ago. So hopefully that one won't be an issue and I can dispute it after the mortgage.