How do lenders look at soft pulls?

[acevesf]

 I am going to get pre-approval within the month of December currently I owe $1 on all my CC's!!!! I was reading that you can request a CLI through macys and best buy (two of the cards I have) and they do soft pulls. I want to request increases not because I want to buy something but to show I have more available credit. 

My question is would lenders see this negatively? do they even see soft pulls?  

Thanks guys! 

[Anonymous]

having larger credit lines (unless you owe a balance on them) does not help with an approval.  Also, never trust when they say they will do a sift pull only.  Often they say that and then do a hard.  The CSR's tend to be clueless about this.  If you read the credit board you will see numerous people that were told soft pull only to find a hard pull (which you will then have to explain to the LO and may lower your FIC score.

[acevesf]

Ok i wont do it then lol...just thought haveing more of a Credit line would help the fico.

[Anonymous]

nope

age of account

ratio of limit verses debt

payment history

Thos are what they look at.

Not to say that in a manual underwrite that an underwriter might slightly favor someone with 30K in avilable credit that is all or mostly paid off verses someone with 500 available credit.  But calling in and getting another 500 added to your limit and such is not going to change anything and you risk getting hard pulls.

And for the record, I used to have a besy buy card and they DID hard pull me for a CLI.  Of course this was 2-3 years ago.