We have been working for a long time toward our goal of purchasing a home. About 2 weeks ago we had a mortgage broker run my credit ( not my husbands due to low score and only really working on mine due to his amount of debt ) She at the time said we needed to get to a mid score of 640 to qualify for a mortgage with a grant program for the down payment assistance. I paid down my credit cards as she advised and she called today my mid score from then went up BUT its now my high score and my mid score is 628. To say the least I am frustrated. We do qualify for an FHA loan with 3.5% down which we dont have and would like to wait til we can qualify for the down payment assistance.
Here is where I stand as of right now:
Collections include one that I am paying monthly on and have been up until now reporting as a charge off and or late payments but will now be reporting as paid on time starting back from August 2015.
Capital One unsecured with $300 $0 balance
Discover secured with $200 (we were planning to add another $100) with a $0 balance
Fingerhut $200 with $0 balance
Student Loans are in forebarence right now not making payments til next month
I paid a small collection that will be deleted soon hopefully as I had a pay for delete agreement
I have other collections but the mortgage broker said they dont need to be touched.
My question is if it is possible to get my score up at least 20 points idelly 32 by next month at this time? If so how ???? I know paying down balances helps but I dont have any soooooooooo help ! 
Thanks in advance!
@Anonymous wrote:
I am about 1 month or so into rebuilding my credit so I might be out of line. But what sticks out to me is that you have no credit card utilization. I think they say optimal usage is ~9%.
Are the higher collections older? Like 7 years old so they would be off your report soon?
Maybe ask your question in the rebuilding section? Very helpful. I can't believe how much I've learned about credit in the past month from them.
Optimal utilization is pretty much anything non-zero.
@OP, charge a $5 burger on whatever statement is closing the soonest and you'll get some points back though I don't know if it will be 20 points from you suggested.
Any collection on there is going to drag your score down regardless of whether your LO suggests it needs to be resolved or not from an underwriting perspective. I'd go post all of them over in the Rebuilding Your Credit section, and see if people have any experiences with your individual creditors in terms of getting them deleted. You'll get a couple of points from individual ones coming off the big the big wins are getting them all of.
What's the rush in this case? Can't wait for a bit while your credit improves and you hoard more cash?
