@Elizablue wrote:Hi Folks,
Can anyone explain to me please why making a mortgage payment on time would cause my score to drop? Then making a mortgage payment caused my score to increase. Paying down credit card balances cause my score to increase. Then paying down credit card balances had no affect on score at all. I've asked this question repeatedly to FICO reps and the only answer I get is the score are a complex computation and different events can cause different outcomes...basically.
When you get MyFICO reports of a change in score, and there is additional text or there are other alerts, there is not necessarily any connection between the score change and the event being reported.
That being said,
1. making mortgage payments on time would never cause your score to drop,
2. making a mortgage payment would not cause your score to increase unless it pushed your overall installment loan utilization below a certain threshold,
3. paying down credit card balances increases your score, gradually
@Elizablue wrote:Thank you. It doesn't make sense to me either. But when that was the only change in my credit payments for that month there is nothing else to associate it to. It seems very odd that the payment and then subsequent are not related as the only time my score drops is when I make a mortgage payment.
Which bureau was it? If it was Transunion, all bets are off with their issues at the moment. The mortgage payment is just a trigger for a score update rather than the cause of the drop.
Additionally much like SJ suggested regarding installment loans (mortgage) and payments, same thing with credit card payments: FICO calculates utilization on percentages, and if you don't cross a threshold you won't have a shift in score (positive or negative for that matter).
@Revelate wrote:
@Elizablue wrote:Thank you. It doesn't make sense to me either. But when that was the only change in my credit payments for that month there is nothing else to associate it to. It seems very odd that the payment and then subsequent are not related as the only time my score drops is when I make a mortgage payment.
Which bureau was it? If it was Transunion, all bets are off with their issues at the moment. The mortgage payment is just a trigger for a score update rather than the cause of the drop.
Additionally much like SJ suggested regarding installment loans (mortgage) and payments, same thing with credit card payments: FICO calculates utilization on percentages, and if you don't cross a threshold you won't have a shift in score (positive or negative for that matter).
So true about TU right now. Until they get their issues fixed, it's hard to say for sure hiw accurate things will be.
@RM21 wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@Elizablue wrote:Thank you. It doesn't make sense to me either. But when that was the only change in my credit payments for that month there is nothing else to associate it to. It seems very odd that the payment and then subsequent are not related as the only time my score drops is when I make a mortgage payment.
Which bureau was it? If it was Transunion, all bets are off with their issues at the moment. The mortgage payment is just a trigger for a score update rather than the cause of the drop.
Additionally much like SJ suggested regarding installment loans (mortgage) and payments, same thing with credit card payments: FICO calculates utilization on percentages, and if you don't cross a threshold you won't have a shift in score (positive or negative for that matter).
So true about TU right now. Until they get their issues fixed, it's hard to say for sure hiw accurate things will be.
Don't you talk no trash about TU. They're the ones that put me on a clean scorecard with a 772 
As background and I think I already posted about doing this. I took out a re-fi on my primary and paid off all my rental properties. Well as you can imagine this caused all my scores to plummet (high 700s and low 800s down to mid 700s 
) because I replaced perfect old credit with new credit. I hadn't expected that to happen but was in a better financial position because of it.
Then I transferred a high ratio credit card (50%) to a zero balance card. Then on the previous high ratio card I asked for a double limit increase. Once I got it, that score eventually leveled out and starting going up because I had it under 30% use. I did that again and got a limit increase to get another card to 20% ratio. After that everything was on auto pay and should have continued to go up. But instead the mortgage payments to the new primary started dropping my score.
@Elizablue wrote:As background and I think I already posted about doing this. I took out a re-fi on my primary and paid off all my rental properties. Well as you can imagine this caused all my scores to plummet (high 700s and low 800s down to mid 700s
Then I transferred a high ratio credit card (50%) to a zero balance card. Then on the previous high ratio card I asked for a double limit increase. Once I got it, that score eventually leveled out and starting going up because I had it under 30% use. I did that again and got a limit increase to get another card to 20% ratio. After that everthing was on auto pay and should have continued to go up. But instead the mortgage payments to the new primary started dropping my score.
I seriously doubt that making mortgage payments dropped your score.