number of accounts with balance

[IPersist]

Guys I need help understanding the best way to maximize my score based on my profile as I've been trying to hit 700 for a mortgage to no avail. I have 7 Accounts

- 1 Installment  a/c  auto loan- 16000/21000

- 4 Credit Cards  and 2 charge cards one of the charged cards amex is closed

- Total credit limits 11250 I only have one of the credit cards with a limit of 2000 reporting a balance of 80.

- The rest of the cards have the following limits 500, 750, 8000 and an amex charge card

Equifax complains that I have too many accounts with balances - i don't understand as I only have the single autoloan and one of the credit card reporting a balance out  of a total of 6 accounts. The percentage is approximately 33% the funny thing is it says fico high achievers have 3 accounts with balances but it doesn't tell me how many account they have.

-Transunion complains that my non mortgage a/c has a high balance 16000

I need to buy a house and the lender requires 700+ for the rate I'm looking for I've been trying the past three months to increase my score from 680/690 to 700 and I move up a few points and the next suggestion puts me down by almost the same amount.

Eq: 693 TU: 690 Ex: 709 for PSECU. I have read here extensively but I still don't much about how this whole utilization and a/c with balances work.

- My next move is to pay of the 80 bucks on the 2000 card and have the about 8% of the 8000 report a balance.

Please advice on the best way for me to maximize my points based on my profile.

[GregB]

Are you saying you only have ONE Revolving account showing a balance and that balance is $80?

I guess that would be confusing if they are saying "too many" and it is only one. You can't get less than one unless you have none.

I don't undersand what "a/c" means.

ETA: OK, now I see that you have two accounts with balances and one of them is $80. I would make that $0. Gettting the other one in single digits should also help.

[IPersist]

a/c = account.and yes i have two accounts with balances one is autoloan which I can't do much about the other iscredit card that i can easily pay off if i think it will help my score. I was under the impression that one revolving account must report a balance to help with my score. I am not sure how much though. My total revolving credit is 11250.

[GregB]

OK, your total CC debt is $80. So you have a balance on 2 accounts out of 6 open accounts. One of those with a balance is an installement loan (auto).

I suppose you need to try paying off the $80 account and see what happens. That should eliminate the negative factors from the CRAs. I wonder if that will help your score?

[IPersist]

I don't mind trying that my only concern is that will put my utilization to 0% my understanding is my revolving utilization should be 1-9% and that my fico penalizes you for 0% utilization. Currently i have 4% utilization on the one card and 1% utilization on all cards. At the moment I have 1.3yrs longest account age and 8months average account age and a lot of inquiries those are hurting me alot. Thanks for your suggestions

[MarineVietVet]

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@IPersist wrote:

a/c = account.and yes i have two accounts with balances one is autoloan which I can't do much about the other iscredit card that i can easily pay off if i think it will help my score. I was under the impression that one revolving account must report a balance to help with my score. I am not sure how much though. My total revolving credit is 11250.

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Welcome to the Forums.

Everyone's situation is different and there is no one size fits all approach to this but what seems to work well for most people is to have only one of their cards report a small (<9% of it's credit limit) balance each month and then pay in full before the due date. You can use it as much as you want during the month but what's important is the reported balance because for most cards whatever is reported on the monthly statement is what is used to calculate utilization for the month.

You might have to play around with the percentages for a few months to see what works best for you. Some people say that 1-3% utilization helps the most. For others it might be 5-9%. As I said it's not one size fits all.

On any other cards always try and have them report a zero balance each month. That doesn't mean you can't use them just make sure that the desired zero balance on these accounts is achieved several days before their statements post.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".

[RobertEG]

Under % util of credit, revolving and installment credit are separately scored.  % util of revolving credit is weighted much higher than that of installment credit.

For the most part, you can disregard the installment accounts when attempting to improve % util.

FICO scores util of revolving credit under three criteria.  Overall % util of all revolving accounts, the individual % util of each account, and the percent of accounts reporting a balance.  Overall % util is weighted the highest, so is the primary focus.  To a lesser degree, FICO then scores the % util of each revolving account, and then the number of accounts reporting a balance as a percent of total revolving accounts.

The last two items are really fine-tweaking, but that is apparently what you are after. With two revolving accounts, no more than one should report a balance in order to keep the percent of cards reporting a balance at no more than 50%.

I see five open revolving lines of credit in your CR (I assumer that the closed AMEX has no balance).   If you get all cards under 10% individual util, and have no more than two report a balance, that would be a very good fine-tweak.

More significant gains could come from deletion of any old derogs, particularly if major derogs.  Thus, in addition to tweaking % util, do you have any old derogs that you can attempt deletion?

[slarano]

Are you measuring Util % based on your monthly payment habits, or what your CR's are actually reporting? There are a fair amount of people who think that PIF each month automatically means that their CR will reflect those actions with a $0 balance reported, but you have to make sure you pay off your monthly balance before each particular CCC reports to the credit bureau. Usually it's before a monthly statement's closing date, but all in all, it all depends on the particular company's reporting habits. Other than that, I'm not sure why your score is below 700, seems like your credit profile in terms of credit to debt ratio is in tip top shape.

[IPersist]

I have no account in bad standing past or present my only nemesis I started using credit cards/loans about 15months ago. I was paying cash for everything prior to this. So the main things affecting my account is account age and inquiries which I can't do anything about other than wait and see what happens with time. The time item affecting my account is number of accounts with balance. I was also looking for the best way to tweak my util so I can get more points quickly.

Yes amex actually combined the two accounts Gold/Premier gold as one so yes the closed one has a zero balance. My payment history is perfect as of today.

Thanks for your help guys

[IPersist]

Based on what the CRs are reporting