@nycfico wrote:I'm sorry that I'm probably asking people to be redundant because I know these topics are addressed all over this forum, but I can't make any sense of it.
I've been rebuilding for a while now. Three years ago, my fico scores were in the mid 400's! While I still have an IRS tax lien and baddies that are aging, my Fico scores on this site are all between 605 and 610 and I want to buy a house next summer.
But I looked directly at Experien yesterday, and it has me at 530!! Getting in the car this morning, it didn't help to hear one of their ads taking a shot at myfico by saying that THEIR score (Experian's) is the one mortgage people look at. Then I joined credit sesame and it says my score is 640!
I understand there are differences between so called FAKO's and FICO's, but I am not understanding why I have nearly 100 points difference based on who I look at! What is going on? Furthermore, I gather that the scores in here aren't neccessarily the same year that mortgage lenders use.
Why does the industry keep this so confusing? Why can't we just go see what mortgage lenders see and manage and clean up our credit accordingly? What is the point of these so called FAKO scores?
Put simply, it's about money. FAKO's are cheaper to produce (no nasty FICO licensing fees!), and providing credit scores sadly is a money making venture. It's only recently that FICO did something awfully smart with their Open Access program, but I don't know why more lenders aren't subscribing to it and until that becomes far more popular, the various FAKO's are still revenue generating.
Last I checked you cannot purchase an EX Risk Model v2 score anywhere. The only two places I know of for obtaining one is either being a PSECU member, and a loan application. Unless it's a recent change, you cannot purchase any FICO score from Experian (within the last month or so that I've been pretty much ignoring all things FICO / credit or so).
I'm not happy with the lack of commonly used mortgage scores available to the public consumer, but it's the world we live in.
FAKO's should be religiously ignored.
