Losing points beyond my control

[Anonymous]

Arg!  I have been working hard on a quick credit boost in order to get a loan approved ASAP.

Started out with MyFico scores of 649, 650, 683.  We've had no lates in 3ish years but generally have a revolving CC balance. I managed to get my TU just over 700 last week, but then suddenly everything started dropping again!

Paid the CC's down to 0 last month but then had to get the brakes fixed on the car, and put it on the CC thinking I could pay before the statement hit.. PIF 3 days before statement closing, CC reported 0 balance online, but the statement still closed with a balance showing (about 33% of the card).  Argh!!!.  Total credit on my report once June reports should now be $1776 in CC debt with $11000 in available credit. 

Last month MyFico reported our CC usage accross the board averaged out to about 34%.  I'm hoping since we're at about 16% now, that will still be enough for a point boost?  Or do I need to 0 out the card and wait another month? I zeroed out my American Express and saw a 5 point increase with TU, but a 2 point drop with EQ.  What's up with that?? 

Second frustration.... My mortgage just got sold.  We have no control over this so not much I can do, but BAD TIMING!  I saw 2 hard inquiries just hit.  Our old mortgage acount is now listed as "closed" and the new one isn't reporting yet at any of the 3 credit agencies so even though I'm paying on time (always have) I have no open mortgage accounts showing up!  My scores dropped about 15 points across the board from this.  Any ideas of how quickly this will rebound? 

Third crappy thing.. my student loan that is still in deferment until 2018 suddenly switched from reporting as 100% OK to now showing "No Data."  What's up with that?? I don't know if that actually hurt my scores, but it's probably not helping!

I know quick fixes are tricky but I was hoping the CC's would help boost my mid above 640 and now all these other things keep hitting! Just wanted to vent, credit scores make me so mad sometimes!

[Anonymous]

The best thing to do is to focus on the things you can control the most easily.  In this case that would be your CC debt.

To optimize your score you want All cards reporting Zero Except One (AZEO) with the remaining card reporting a small positive balance (e.g. $20 or whatever).

Going from 34% total utilization to 16% will give you some scoring points.  AZEO is much better -- it will give you all the scoring points you can possibly get from the CC scoring factors. (Note that paying all cards to $0 will hurt your score -- do not do this.)

Some CC issuers will report your balance mid-cycle if it goes to $0 (Chase is an example) or if you call them and ask them to.  We had a master thread that listed many different CC issuers and which ones were friendly in this respect.

As far as the mortgage goes, that is indeed unfortunate timing.  It depends on how this all plays out on your credit reports.  Call the old loan A and the new loan B.  Suppose loan A was for $300k and you had paid off $100k (thus a balance of 200k).  If the new loan appears as a loan for 200k on which you owe 200k, that will hurt your score compare to the way it was.

Focus on the CC debt, which is something you can control.

[RobertEG]

If a new mortgage results from internal transfer or sale rather than a consumer initiated request for new or extended credit, it should be coded under CRA policy as a soft inquiry.  The CRAs provide specific codes to cover non-consumer initiated credit inquiries.

I would contact the creditor and ask how they reported their inquiry, and request recoding to soft.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that info!  These forums are SO helpful.

One of the hard inquiries was from CIS WEST.  It is only showing up on Equifax which figures is my worst score.  I immediately disputed it, and the results came back a few days later saying inquiries are considered valid. 

Should I contact CIS WEST directly regarding the inquiry?  Or my old mortgage company?  I got a letter with the name of the new mortgage company and it's something I've never heard of before, cenlar or something like that.  This is like the 4th time they have sold our mortgage out from under us, and it's very annoying.  All the other times my auto-pay settings were carried over, but this new lender sent me a letter saying I would need to re-set up my auto pay or it wouldn't process July 1 payment. 

Lucky I caught that piece of mail since it came to our PO box we don't check on the regular.  I'd be SO irritated if we missed a payment because of this. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Second frustration.... My mortgage just got sold.  We have no control over this so not much I can do, but BAD TIMING!  I saw 2 hard inquiries just hit.  Our old mortgage acount is now listed as "closed" and the new one isn't reporting yet at any of the 3 credit agencies so... I have no open mortgage accounts showing up!  My scores dropped about 15 points across the board from this.  Any ideas of how quickly this will rebound? 

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The text highlighted in blue above is likely to be causing you a big chunk of any recent score dive, rather than the inquirries.  (You later mention that at least one inquiry is only appearing one one bureau -- an inquiry appearing on one bureau could not cause a uniform dive across all three bureaus.)

RobertEG's idea of asking for inquiries to be recoded as soft is great, but it won't affect the highlighted problem.

Be sure you are tackling the CC balance issue since that is much more under your control.