CC Authorized User

[Raiders1]

I'm going to be applying for a mortgage in May, and there is a possibility that I might need my fiancee to co-sign. I was going to apply on my own, but we might need to include her income to get the house we want. Her credit is not horrible (around 620), but I want it to be better if she is going to co-sign. She has a few baddies (which we are working on) and an auto loan that she's almost done paying, but no credit cards. If she applies for a CC she'll probably be denied, and we don't want her to get a new secured CC because we need the money for the down payment and the history on that card will be very short. So here are the questions.

Should I add her as an Authorized user on one of my two CCs? If so which one would help her more? One is 2 years old with $1K limit, one is 8mo. old with $9K limit. Both have perfect history and under 6% util.

Would it matter to the lender that we would have the same CC listed on both of our reports?

[guiness56]

Score wise it will help but some lenders won't use those accounts.  They want to see her score minus AU accounts.

She should be able to get some sort of card, even a secured.  She can try the pre-approval route first to see if they offer anything.  It is only a soft pull.  If they do she can apply and could be denied.  It would be a hardpull.

Others talk about the shopping cart trick with cards like Victoria Secret and Express.  Not sure exactly how this works but you can ask in another thread or do a search on the forums.

You can also go to whogavemecredit.com and look around and see who was approved for what with what scores and different things on their CR.