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That's consistent with my experience. Big jump from unclean to clean.
I have a bankruptcy from late 2008 otherwise the only baddies are those included in that bankruptcy. I have about 10% utilization and my oldest account is 13 years. As of 3/28/12 my Equifax FICO was 724. Heck, I'm surprised.
I'm kind of perplexed, looking at some of these responses, about why my score (EQ FICO) is as "low" as it is. I have 0 baddies, and a 16-year credit history with an AAoA of 6 years. Maybe it's too many recent HPs (4 of them - bleh) and the fact that my utilization was reported at 14% when I pulled the score? (It's not actually 14%, but I pulled it at a time when I had done a balance transfer recently and both the transferred from card and the transferred to card were reporting the balance.)
My score was 732, but that seems kind of low, considering. I do have a lot of student loans - all current, some in deferment, but I didn't think that would make a huge difference.
KellMN,
Thank you for your post! My husband has a very similar credit profile to you. His latest FICO's from Aug 2012 were both 709. We only have one loan (no credit card debt), an installment loan for an auto. The util on that installment loan when the scores were last reported in August was 50.13%. Presently (Sept 2012), the util is down to 24.40%. We haven't rechecked his FICO yet, but I'm optimistic that we should see a bit of an increase in his scores. Based on the information you provided, looks like we just need to get the util on that loan down a bit more (to 9% util) to bump him up to that 720 score. I appreciate you sharing and confirming my thoughts!
Update: by lowering the total util on that installment loan from 50.13% to 24.40%, my husband's score jumped from 709 up to 724 (he has a collection). My score went from 768 to 772 (clean credit history). Different scoring buckets, thus differences in amount of increase.