Increase my score

Anonymous · ‎01-09-2018

Hi All I want to increase my score in the next few months, i am in the process of buying a hous. I have 2 more months to go before i lock my interest rate. My experian is 707 and TU is 719.

I have 40,000 credit available and i am maintaining 0 balance on all the cards except for one (low balance). I have one car lease loan which has balance of 200 dollars remaining. So would opening a installment loan using SSL help increase my score? Would score go up after a month the SSL account is reported?

thanks in advance

Anonymous · ‎01-09-2018

You already have a loan that's nearly paid off, so employing the SSL technique won't help your score now. All it would do is allow your score to stay the same once your current loan reports as closed. It would not improve your score over what it is today. It's not very advisable to implement the SSL technique though if you're a couple of months away from a mortgage IMO. Others can weigh in on that. Are the FICO scores you provided FICO 08's or are they mortgage scores?

The best thing you could do in theory would be to somehow keep that auto loan open for a few more months. I'm not sure if/how that could be accomplished, but that would be the best thing for keeping your score where it's at and not losing any "credit mix" points prior to securing your mortgage.

Anonymous · ‎01-09-2018

Using the SSL Technique will certainly not cause your score to go up. That is because you already have an open installment account (the auto lease) and it is almost entirely paid off.

Deploying the SSL Technique might very well prevent your score from going down after the lease closes.

I suggest you read post #2 in that thread, which explain the theory behind how FICO 8 scores installment debt.

We have never been able to get a clear picture of how the mortgage models deal with installment utilization. The belief is that one of the three scores is affected much like FICO 8 is, but the other two are not. We used to think that the one that was affected was EX but we had a report that suggested that it might be one of the other two.

BTW, I note that you mention you are buying a house but you only mention two of your three mortgage scores. Any particular reason you don't mention your EQ score? And are you certain that the scores you mention are FICO mortgage scores -- not FICO 8 or one of the many other flavors of FICO?

Anonymous · ‎01-11-2018

THese scores FICO8 scores. How would i find out my mortgage scores?

Anonymous · ‎01-11-2018

@Anonymous wrote:
THese scores FICO8 scores. How would i find out my mortgage scores?

Your lender might provide them to you or you can purchase with on MyFico -- it's cheaper to purchase a monthly or quarterly subscription pull than paying for a one time 3B.