Ouch, but welcome to the forums!
Paying off installment debt, which includes mortgage debt, does very little at all in helping your FICO scores. And "debt-to-income" is not considered in FICO scoring, which doesn't even know what your income is. DTI is a factor in lending decisions, where it's a factor along with your scores, your credit history, and other items.
The really big driver of FICO scores, along with your credit history, is the ratio of amount owed to amount of total (not available) credit, and mostly on your revolving credit, aka credit cards. Add up the amount you owe on all credit cards and lines of credit with CL's of ~$30K or less, and then add up all the credit limits of these, and then divide the first figure by the second. That is your revolving credit utilization, generally termed "util" here on the forums. Getting down your revolving util is one of the best things that you can do for your FICO scores. Reducing installment util can be smart for your personal finances, but it's generally kind of eh for your scores.
It's possible that when your credit was pulled again, that $6500 payment on your cards hadn't yet posted. You generally have to wait until your regular statement dates for the lenders to report your new balances, and then you have to wait another week or so (sometimes longer) for all three credit bureaus to get around to posting the new figures. In the meantime, a credit pull will show your old util, and your scores will reflect it.
If you haven't already, please read Understanding Your FICO ® Score and Credit Scoring 101 (at least the first post.)
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An example for figuring revolving util:
(amount owed / total credit line)
card 1: $1,000 / $5,000
card 2: $0 / $20,000
card 3: $3,000 / $40,000 <-- this is ignored for revolving util, as the CL is over ~$30K
line of credit: $5,000 / $10,000
HELOC: $45,000 / $50,000 <-- this is ignored for revolving util, as the CL is over ~$30K
So:
$1,000 + $0 + $5,000 = $6,000. <-- total amount owed
$5,000 + $20,000 + $10,000 = $35,000
revolving util = $6,000 / $35,000 = 17.143%, which rounds up to 18% for FICO calculations.
And so forth.
edited to help struggle out of an impenetrable thicket of terrible sentence structure
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
