Great to find such a helpful and knowledgeable forum here!@ 
)
Well, it is good to now know how the husband and wife fico scores are handled for a mortgage. I assume same rule applies for refi's, correct?
My situation is that I got married in 2007. The house and mortgage are in my name only. Being self employed (my same company all along) the last refi 4.75 years ago, was made easy because the amount I was borrowong was under 65% LTV. I'm told (and assumed) that no (or low?) doc loans are extinct.
So sales in my business have been dropping over the past few years, so I wonder if I alone would qualify. My credit scores are in the 99th percentile, but now I learn that is of no value if we decide to include her in the new loan ( I am OK either way).
My wife had a banruptcy around 2003. Until a year ago, at my urging to start building her credit back up, she got two credit cards and has been using them and paying on time. She did have a high balance until last week, when we paid it off. She also got a used car loan a little ove a yearago too. She has been paying on time AND paying a few hundred dollars more many months.
I am just starting the process and faxed all the tax returns, bank statements, etc to my loan broker (friend) last night. I guess I had better get him to pull my wife's credit reports ASAP, since that is now the biggest variable.
wonderin' how I stand... )
My loan broker just ran pulled our credit scores. My mid score was 800, my wifes mid score was 678.
I am guessing we should be able to bump her score up by 2 points (to 670) easilly by paying off the only card she has a few hundred dollar balance on, Then add her to a high limit ($24k), zero balance card of mine.
After her last card debt (above), the only other outstanding debt is her car loan (in her sole name).
Would paying off the $5,400 bal. on her car loan get any significant boost? ($8400 orig loan- 50% was put down on purchase). Would it be a stretch to hope to be able to create a 22 point boost in her mid score. That would bump her into the 700 bracket which I think would make her score only add about 1/4 point to our interest rate. I believe getting just into the 680-699 bracket would add an extra .4% to our rate. I got these from the tool on this site (cool). Though I think the rates quoted in the tool for CA are about 3/8 to 1/2 point higher than I am being quoted (assuming paying .75 - 1.0 point to get the lower rate). 30 yr fixed conventional < 417k.
Any input on if a credit score can be bettered in the short term (1 month? dreaming ? ? ), with sending the credit agencies corrections and recent payoffs directly.