FICO score increase with inquiries?

[Anonymous]

I signed up for Scorewatch a couple months back. I recently began shopping for a mortgage since my score qualified me. Something odd happened, when the first mortgage inquiry hit my report Scorewatch alerted me and reported an increase of 40 points!! Three days later, the second inquiry hit my report and Scorewatch alerted me and reported an increase of 13 points!!

I've gone over these with a fine tooth comb and the only changes are the inquiries besides paying balances down by $150 or so (which has been the norm).

Not that I'm complaining, but what gives?

The only thing that I can come up with is that Scorewatch isn't as up-to-date as I thought and that initial 40 point increase had already happened, but not shown until there was a change to my report(the inquiry). Doesn't explain the 13 points though.

[Anonymous]

If it was by luck I wish I had yours. I'm wondering if something else happened behind the scene like your credit file maturing, whether by an individual account or your entire history as a whole. I can't think of anything else at the moment but if I do I'll get back to you and you do the same if something else comes to mind.

[Anonymous]

Score watch is definitely not as up to date as it claims to be. I have paid all of my cards down to under 10%, they have updated on my Truecredit, but I have yet to receive an alert from Scorewatch. Another example is Scorewatch alerted me of a Collection (ATT--$58) just a week ago and that collection was added in January 07' and has been removed within the last couple of weeks. No alert that it has been removed and a late alert showing that it had been added.

[Anonymous]

I doubt that inquiries increased your score 40 points.  Do you know it the new lines were added to your reports around that same time?  I did get a score increase when I applied for an AMEX but I think I had too few revolving accounts, now I have too many, go figure

[Anonymous]

Yeah, it's a matter of finding that "Goldilocks level." In my case, I'm many years away from potentially having too much credit.

[Anonymous]

No new accounts were added to my report. Just the inquiries. Scorewatch would have alerted me to any changes. Just to be sure, I've poured over the new report vs. the pre-increase report and I sure am puzzled by this. Normally I would have called it a fluke, but the two inquiries were added just days apart and both resulted in an increase. There must be something to this.

With my luck, it's just some kind of error that will be corrected just as I go to close on a home.

[Anonymous]

The increase has nothing to do with the inquiries.

The biggest misconception people have about credit scoring is that a certain action always has a direct, immediate, quantifiable effect on a score by raising or lowering it by a specific number of points (OK, so a BK will indeed tank it).  There is much more going on behind the scenes.  Perhaps the length of your total credit history has aged or the average length of accounts has increased.  Perhaps you have put more time behind you for a baddie.  Any of these could result in a higher FICO score, but they are not something that you can "see" directly in your reports.

This is why I think some score monitoring products do more harm than good -- people end up freaking out because they did "the right thing" and their score dropped 13 points. 

[Anonymous]

I had the same thing happen to me a couple weeks ago. There was in inquiry and then my score went up 22 points, then the next day 13 points. I too had just applied for a mortage ( with Lending Tree). It's strange...but I'll take it

[Tuscani]

Something else changed. Inqs do not cause score increases.

[Anonymous]

Clarkkent wrote:

I signed up for Scorewatch a couple months back. I recently began shopping for a mortgage since my score qualified me. Something odd happened, when the first mortgage inquiry hit my report Scorewatch alerted me and reported an increase of 40 points!! Three days later, the second inquiry hit my report and Scorewatch alerted me and reported an increase of 13 points!!

If scores went up like that with inquiries, I'd be in FICO heaven.  Like the other contributors have stated something else must have happened.  I've never received anything but a score reduction with an inquiry.