Rebucketing Question

[Anonymous]

Can anyone share the parameters that would cause your profile to be rebucketed? I'm curious and I sense that may have happened to me. My scores have been going up except for TransUnion. Then, starting last Tuesday, TransUnion increases my score on 3 seperate occasions (the latest being today). It's an overall increase of 16 points. I'm happy it's increased and I assume it's because my final last payment aged 1 yr today. That and it seems that my reported UTI dropped about 50% to below 30. 

[Anonymous]

For clean profiles, scorecard assignment in FICO 8 is based on three factors:

(1)  Age of oldest account

(2)  Age of youngest account

(3)  Total number of accounts (i.e. whether or not you are a thin profile)

"Dirty" profiles are those with some significant derogs, and their scorecard assignment criteria are different., A few 30-day lates will not cause a profile to be classified to one of those dirty score cards; you typically need something a bit more serious.

I am guessing that you may have some derogs.  If so, can you tell us what they were? 

I note that your utilization just dropped by 50% and it is now below 30%.  That means it was around 80%.  That's a huge change in a major scoring factor.  You shouldn't be speculating about a hypothetical animal like rebucketing when you have a rhinoceros staring at you.

You also wonder whether a score change might be related to "my final last payment aged 1 yr today."  Age of last payment to an account is not a scoring factor in any FICO model. (FICO models currently only consider payments in the sense that it will record if a creditor reports that you are late on a payment.  Otherwise it does not track when you make payments and how much.  Future FICO models probably will do that, but none do so now.)

[wasCB14]

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@Anonymous wrote:

For clean profiles, scorecard assignment in FICO 8 is based on three factors:

(1)  Age of oldest account

(2)  Age of youngest account

(3)  Total number of accounts (i.e. whether or not you are a thin profile)

"Dirty" profiles are those with some significant derogs, and their scorecard assignment criteria are different., A few 30-day lates will not cause a profile to be classified to one of those dirty score cards; you typically need something a bit more serious.

I am guessing that you may have some derogs.  If so, can you tell us what they were? 

I note that your utilization just dropped by 50% and it is now below 30%.  That means it was around 80%.  That's a huge change in a major scoring factor.  You shouldn't be speculating about a hypothetical animal like rebucketing when you have a rhinoceros staring at you.

You also wonder whether a score change might be related to "my final last payment aged 1 yr today."  Age of last payment to an account is not a scoring factor in any FICO model. (FICO models currently only consider payments in the sense that it will record if a creditor reports that you are late on a payment.  Otherwise it does not track when you make payments and how much.  Future FICO models probably will do that, but none do so now.)

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Not sure if OP meant 50 percentage points of utilization or 50% of the debt. Whether the previous utilization was 60% or 80%, though, it was definitely high.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I thought about that.  It is conceivable that he meant his utilization was 60% and then he cut it in half.  This comes up all the time when people use percents.  In general, when communicating, it's best to assume your listeners will assume you are implying subtraction when you are refering to a drop between two figures that are both percents.

E.g. the chance of rain was 40%, but then a front moved through and it dropped by 30%.  The audience will assume that it dropped to 10% rather than it dropped to 28%.

As you say, either way his utilization was high and it is now < 29%.  That's the likely cause of any score change.  Rebucketing hypotheses are best reserved for situations where you are convinced that nothing has changed at all in your profile or scores for the last three months and then suddenly your score make a big shift (again with clear confirmation through a report pull that nothing has changed).

Even still, the most probable answer is "you haven't been rebucketed, something did change, and you just haven't found it."  But if rebucketing is ever gonna have a place in your mind, it's only after you have exhausted all other explanations.

[Anonymous]

Rebucketing, scorecards, etc., is a difficult concept to wrap your head around.  To be honest, I struggled for a while with the concept, then came to the conclusion that it just doesn't matter.  According to everything I've read, as long as I've got 90-day lates within the 7 year window, I'm stuck in a dirty bucket, which means there's some theoretical max possible score.  Maybe I'm close to it now.  My latest derog (a 90) becomes two years old in January. If I don't see a bump in February from that, having zero negatives in two years, then I will just assume I'm at my max and will live here for another five years.  But hey, it's not a bad place to live. They're giving me plenty of credit here, and I'm getting decent enough auto loan rates.

Of course, I could renew my focus on getting those derog accounts to go away, but I just don't see that happening.  It's not just one here or there. I'd have to wipe at least two to three accounts completely off my profile to make that happen any sooner.

[Revelate]

I did get a bump on TU when my 10/15 30 day late went over a year and I can't explain it with anything else.  Might've been part of it though deliquencies do differ on severity and also in the pattern of lates according to the marketing information.  Mine was a singleton at any rate.

@SeveredFinger: if those are your scores in your siggy you possibly have another 100 or so points to gain even with that 90 day late; we had a 90 day late with something like a 785 reported at one point... was only a single person reporting it and I never saw a comfirmation from anyone else but 760 was reported by someone else so I suspect it's well within the realm of possibility; especially since we have had people get to 756 or thereabouts with a tax lien.

[Anonymous]

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@Revelate wrote:

I did get a bump on TU when my 10/15 30 day late went over a year and I can't explain it with anything else.  Might've been part of it though deliquencies do differ on severity and also in the pattern of lates according to the marketing information.  Mine was a singleton at any rate.

@Anonymous: if those are your scores in your siggy you possibly have another 100 or so points to gain even with that 90 day late; we had a 90 day late with something like a 785 reported at one point... was only a single person reporting it and I never saw a comfirmation from anyone else but 760 was reported by someone else so I suspect it's well within the realm of possibility; especially since we have had people get to 756 or thereabouts with a tax lien.

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Well that's encouraging.  No collections, BK, public records, etc.  So maybe I will crack the 700/720 barrier in February then.

[Anonymous]

I agree with what Rev said above, SeveredFinger you can get about 100 more points with one major (90 day+) late.

My current FICO 08's are EX 751, TU 763 and EQ 752 and that's with the presence of TWO major lates on TWO different accounts:  A 90 day late that's just about to hit 2 years old and a 120 day late that's nearing 4 years old.  The account with the 120 day late also has two different 60 day lates that are 3-4 years old as well.  I don't even count the pair of 60's though as from what I understand they only impact score for 2 years and I'm well past that.

About 2.5 months ago I had the 90 day late removed from EQ only and my EQ score went from 757 to 787, exactly a 30 point gain.  I can deduce from this that a nearly 2 year old (but not 2 years yet) 90 day late on my profile is worth exactly 30 points.  Unfortunately the 90 day came back almost as quickly as it was removed, and my score returned to the 750's.  Assuming a similar gain from EX and TU, if I'm able to get rid of that 90 day late from all 3B (which I'm very close to) I could potentially possess scores of roughly EX 781, TU 793 and EQ 782 and that would be with the presence of a 120 day late still on one other account (and a pair of 60's to go along with it).

I should know within the next week or two the result of the 90 day late removal and score increases which I will be sure to report back for datapoint purposes.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Yeah, I thought about that.  It is conceivable that he meant his utilization was 60% and then he cut it in half.  This comes up all the time when people use percents.  In general, when communicating, it's best to assume your listeners will assume you are implying subtraction when you are refering to a drop between two figures that are both percents.

E.g. the chance of rain was 40%, but then a front moved through and it dropped by 30%.  The audience will assume that it dropped to 10% rather than it dropped to 28%.

As you say, either way his utilization was high and it is now < 29%.  That's the likely cause of any score change.  Rebucketing hypotheses are best reserved for situations where you are convinced that nothing has changed at all in your profile or scores for the last three months and then suddenly your score make a big shift (again with clear confirmation through a report pull that nothing has changed).

Even still, the most probable answer is "you haven't been rebucketed, something did change, and you just haven't found it."  But if rebucketing is ever gonna have a place in your mind, it's only after you have exhausted all other explanations.

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Correct, my Utilization was 60% and I cut that in half taking my Utilization down to about 28 ( a bit more than half, I know).

What's odd is that TU has adjusted 3 times since 11/22, going up a total of 14 points. Not that i'm complaining. The other two should adjust around 12/17. 

[dragonfly66]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Revelate wrote:

I did get a bump on TU when my 10/15 30 day late went over a year and I can't explain it with anything else.  Might've been part of it though deliquencies do differ on severity and also in the pattern of lates according to the marketing information.  Mine was a singleton at any rate.

@Anonymous: if those are your scores in your siggy you possibly have another 100 or so points to gain even with that 90 day late; we had a 90 day late with something like a 785 reported at one point... was only a single person reporting it and I never saw a comfirmation from anyone else but 760 was reported by someone else so I suspect it's well within the realm of possibility; especially since we have had people get to 756 or thereabouts with a tax lien.

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Well that's encouraging.  No collections, BK, public records, etc.  So maybe I will crack the 700/720 barrier in February then.

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Thanks to both of you (Sev & Rev) for sharing your information.  This definitely gives me some hope.  I am planning on buying a house around the middle of 2017 and would really like for my scores to be in the 720+ range by then.  My scores have really been stagnant lately and I have 3 derogatory items left on my credit profile.  I have a dismissed BK13, a 2nd mortgage that was settled for less than the full amount (both of which are due to fall off in March/April 2017) and my old Wells Fargo mortgage (which shows a 90-day late from 5 years ago).  I've recently gotten some credit limit increases on my current cards and a couple of new Amex's with a small credit limits ($1,000 and $2,000, and I'm done applying for new credit ).  My hope is that, between the increased credit limits and the drop off of the BK13 and 2nd mortgage, I will see a nice increase in my scores prior to applying for the mortgage.  We'll see.  Again, thanks for sharing.  It definitely gave me food for thought.