Approved, Not Approved?

[piersonj1]

So about three months ago my husband and I got a great opportunity to buy a house really cheap and we applied for the home loan.  I have been working on cleaning my credit for the past year and my husband has paid off a couple of past debts as well.  Well, my husbands score was high enough to qualify for the home loan but mine wasn't, so we waited for some things to come off of my CR.  Now I checked my scores and they were where they needed to be, so we re-applied, now my husbands score dropped.  Ugh, he's 2 points shy of where we need him to be and I'm not quite sure what happened.  All we've done is pay things off, and some negatives were even deleted.  Is there anything that I can do to help him get a quick increase, one thing we noticed is that the only open account he has is a car loan, should we get him a credit card or add him to mine as a signer? I have a feeling we might miss out on this opportunity.  Any suggestions would be helpful.

[Anonymous]

Hi piersonj1,

It's hard to say without knowing what all is hurting his score. But, one thing that you did mention was that he currently has no revolving credit accounts. Since you're going for a mortgage I wouldn't have him apply for a new card. However, if you have a card with at least 12 months of history (longer would be better), COMPLETELY CLEAN history & low utilization, and reports AUs to the credit bureaus, that might give him the boost that he needs.