@dethkultur wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:Hey all,
My goal is to buy a house by the end of the year and for that I would ideally have a 680 FICO score. My current credit situation is as follows:
Auto Loan - 2 payments left (June and July) for payoff.
Capital One CC - Open since Jan 2015.
First Premier CC fro 2009 - Charged Off for $312
Commonwealth Financial Systems (collections) - $949 (On Experian)
NORTHEAST CREDIT & COLLECT - $949 (On Equifax )
Current scores are as folows:
TransUnion - 638
Equifax - 638
Experian - 595
How can I reach my goal of 680? Should I open more credit cards? Should I get another loan since my installment payment for car loan is due to be done in July? Help!?
It's unfair, but your score might drop when your auto loan gets paid off. You should consider refinancing it if you can to give your scores all the help they can get.
You may be able to challenge First Premier off of TU today as "obsolete." They are known to remove negative items early EQ and EX are too, but not as early I don't think.) Once you do that, consider freezing EX and EQ until you can get those other baddies off. Then, any mortgage puller can only pull TU. They may tell you that you need to unfreeze the others, but they may not.
I'm guessing you could apply for a Cap 1 right now. Give it a shot once you do the above. The shopping cart thing too if you want. Keep your accounts paid in full. If a balance must post, make sure it isn't over 10% of the card's CL if you can.
Then do nothing, wait 6 months for your mortgage app. If you want to get a mortgage this year, you better cram everything you can into the next week or two, then be done.
As a mortgage industry veteran and with recent experience as a senior underwriter of conforming loans for a major national lender, I can't help but provide some insight... 
-- I do not know of any conventional lender who will allow a bureau to be frozen and still extend credit. We certainly don't, and for exactly the reason outlined above, is that if you have "baddies" we DO want to see them. Fannie and Freddie, the major buyers of most conventional loans, use their automated systems to validate loans coming in, and those systems will not run if there is a frozen bureau. We require at least two scores to make a credit decision, and if the third score is missing, it can only be because the bureau doesn't have enough data to provide a decision, not because you've frozen the report (it will tell us which is the case).
I would recommend pursuing some of the options mentioned above regarding getting the baddies taken off, but I'm not an expert in that area so can't give you more info unfortunately.
- Much of the fear of credit inquiries and mortgage lending is completely overblown-- yes, lenders will ask about your inquiries in the past 120 days (some do 180, some 90, most are 120). The sole reason for this is so that we can determine if a new tradeline has recently been opened, and if so, so that we can request balance/payment information on it and make sure it's qualified into your Debt-To-Income ratio, which generally should be 43% or less. For example, let's say you took out a car loan yesterday and we pull your credit today, your inquiry will show up but your new car loan will not. If we do not ask about this inquiry we will have no way of knowing about the new loan. Provided that your FICO score is good, mortgage lenders do not care how many new accounts you have opened, how many tradelines you have, what your revolving util is, or any of this. DTI is the #1 concern, FICO affects eligibility and pricing, and baddies might affect eligibility (but not always).
TLDR; don't freeze your bureaus and most lenders couldn't give two hoots how many accounts you have if your FICO, payment history, and DTI are sound. Good luck!
