Great questions so far. I'll recap them and add a few more:
(1) How much was the balance?
You indicate a little over $2000. Can you be a little more specific? If it was under $2261, that's helpful to know. It means the individual util was greater than 51% but less than 59%.
(2) How long had you been carrying this balance?
(3) Had the reported balance been generally increasing? (E.g. $1500, $1700, $1900, $2100?)
(4) What has your total utilization been like in the last few months? Had this been generally going up?
(5) On this card, did you ever make only the minimum payment (or very close to the minimum) in the last four months? Twelve months?
(6) This is your only card with Barclays, right?
(7) Have you kept all other cards at < 49% individual utilization for the last four months? If not, can you give more details? (E.g. how many were at 50% or higher?)
The answer about the CLD is that the CLD in itself does not affect your FICO score. The increase in individual utilization and total utilization will affect it, but FICO 8 has no ability to detect the recent occurence of a CLD. That belongs to a comparatively new kind of data in your report, called trended data. Even FICO 9 does not use trended data, though FICO 10 very well may, and individual lenders may be purchasing specialized products that look at trended data.
As far as practical steps, I'd advise making significantly more than the minimum payment on every card and throwing as much money at the Braclays card until the CLDs have stopped for a solid while. In the best world, you'd be paying off all CC debt in preparation for your home purchase, but that may not be realistic for you.
