FICO score simulator to estimate future Equifax Mortgage Score?

[Anonymous]

I'm in a situation where all I can do to improve my credit score for an upcoming loan is to pay off balance of two credit cards, and maybe have one medical collection paid and removed. When using the FICO score simulator, it only simulates Equifax FICO score 8, and not the mortgage score. What I see happening in the simulator (FICO 8) is when paying off a little over 7K in revolving credit, Equifax shows a 705 going to a 730. Keeping that in mind my Equifax mortgage FICO 5 is at 684. Does that mean it also goes up 25 points to 709, based on the simulator for FICO 8? I'm sticking with Equifax, as I heard PenFed pulls from that score for their mortgages and I already have a car loan with them.

I'm pretty sure I can get a home loan with an Equifax 709, not sure how it would go if my 684 only raised below a 700 after paying off the cards. Those damn medical collections is what is killing my score, everything else is great. My income and primary home mortgage is not a problem at all, I have more than enough for my primary mortgage and the new one I will be applying for. Just worried about the FICO 5 score for this vacation home. Any thoughts? 

Thank you in advanced.

[StartingOver10]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm in a situation where all I can do to improve my credit score for an upcoming loan is to pay off balance of two credit cards, and maybe have one medical collection paid and removed. When using the FICO score simulator, it only simulates Equifax FICO score 8, and not the mortgage score. What I see happening in the simulator (FICO 8) is when paying off a little over 7K in revolving credit, Equifax shows a 705 going to a 730. Keeping that in mind my Equifax mortgage FICO 5 is at 684. Does that mean it also goes up 25 points to 709, based on the simulator for FICO 8? I'm sticking with Equifax, as I heard PenFed pulls from that score for their mortgages and I already have a car loan with them.

I'm pretty sure I can get a home loan with an Equifax 709, not sure how it would go if my 684 only raised below a 700 after paying off the cards. Those damn medical collections is what is killing my score, everything else is great. My income and primary home mortgage is not a problem at all, I have more than enough for my primary mortgage and the new one I will be applying for. Just worried about the FICO 5 score for this vacation home. Any thoughts? 

Thank you in advanced.

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Welcome to MyFICO! 

All mortgage lenders pull all three scores and use the middle score.  If you have more than one applicant on the mortgage, they will use the lowest mid-score of the applicants. 

Mortgages are different from a vehicle loan or a credit card. They don't just pull Equifax. It is a tri-merge report. 

The simulator is for FICO 8s only and not for any of the other versions. It is possible to get a mortgage with a score below 700 but if you are going with a conventional mortgage the interest rate is higher with a lower score. PMI is also higher depending on both your LTV and your score. The most important metric for mortgages is your DTI. 

Medical collections are the easiest to remove. Have you visited the rebuilding forum here on MyFICO to get tips on removing medical collections?

[Anonymous]

Adding that Equifax Mortgage that shows on the credit report is just the supplying agency for the tri-merge.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the welcome StartingOver and the information!! 

I'm really worried about the middle score only raising just below 700 or above it, in the next 2 weeks after paying down some revolving credit. Also worried about the 3 medical collections (2 from a little over a year ago, 1 from 6 years ago). In five weeks I'm guessing middle score will probably raise over 700 with all but 9% of revolving credit paid remaining. That's all I can seem to do to help my score at this time.

The good thing is my DTI, that I just caculated, is at 16% paying my primary mortgage and other monthly bills from loans and HOA and HO insurance. I just started recieving a monthly retirment check for rest of my life, coupled with a very good salary, which makes DTI at 16%.

The vacation home I am going for I only have 13%  $55K set aside.  I am hoping the small bank can also get me a small fixed loan for another 33K,from my primary residence (350,000 equity as of now), then setup the primary on the vacation home. Think I'm asking too much? If I am I guess I will just pay PMI.

After reading through the forums and because of my lower score, I have decided to contact a small bank locally that has good reviews, so I can talk face to face. Crossing my fingers that the first paragraph above doesn't scare them away. Otherwise I will probably contact one more, then a mortgage broker if I can't find anything on my own.

Appreciate the knowlege/help.