Score drop

[bcdudley]

My score recently dropped by about 12 points. There were no alerts triggered and I have all of my balances set at $5, so I do not think it was becasue of my balances. Also, all of my negatives are at least 3 years old, with the majority of them being 5 years old. I have recently had numerous inquiries to my credit because I am buying a house. They are spread out over about 3 months because we had to get pre-approval to begin looking, then it took us a while to actually find soemthing we like and get a bid in and accepted before someone else beat us to it.

I did have a note attached to teh score decrease that read:

You moved from one category of credit users to another as time passed. For example, you may have transitioned from the category "consumers with a new credit history" to the category "consumers with a two- to five-year credit history". As a result, your credit report is evaluated differently, causing a slight change in your score. The good news is that moving between categories like this usually offers you the potential to reach a higher FICO® score in the future.

I am trying to figure out if the drop is due to the inquiries or if it like the note said and I changed to a different category. If it is because of the inquiries, is there any way to have the Equifax group them all together as 1 inquiry since it is all for a home purchase. Other than the home loan, I have 3 other inquiries for the last 2 years. With the home loan inquiries, I have about 14.

Thanks,

[haulingthescoreup]

The CRA's don't group the inquiries, but the scoring formula does, as long as they occur within a specified time frame, and as long as they are coded correctly. (This second is not normally a problem with mortgage inqs.) 

Take a look at your previous report and this one. Look at the AAoA (average age of accounts) and the oldest account age. Did either go up by a year? If so, from what to what? (i.e., 4 to 5 years, 7 to 8 years, etc.)

Then take a look at screen 2, with the negatives and positives. What were the negative reasons, in order, from the earlier report, and then from this new report? Don't worry about the positives; they're pretty much there to provide warm fuzzies, I'm afraid.

**I just noticed that you said that the inqs are spread out over 3 months or so. Some might not be "de-duped", then --you could be getting scored on two "clumps" of mortgage inquiries.

And it could be both --new inqs, and you've been re-bucketed.