topic Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10% in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

happy0510 — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:00:21 GMT

I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1%ish mark soon.

Please share your point changes!

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

TRC_WA — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:12:20 GMT

Varies based on profile.

Back when I had $5k in cards... a $4500 purchase would drop my FICO 30 points or more.

Now... 1-2 points.

What I see isn't what you'll see and isn't what the next poster will see... just sayin'.

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:20:12 GMT

@happy0510 wrote:
I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1%ish mark soon.

Please share your point changes!

As TRC pointed out, everyones file is different. You could see just a handfull of points, or you could see 20-30 points. What is your overall profile look like?

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

happy0510 — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 20:07:28 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@happy0510 wrote:
I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1%ish mark soon.

Please share your point changes!
As TRC pointed out, everyones file is different. You could see just a handfull of points, or you could see 20-30 points. What is your overall profile look like?
AAOA 5 years. 1 baddie( Paid for less than on an Amex in March 2014. )

I have a mix with mortgage, car, store cards & credit cards.

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Anonymous — Sat, 22 Aug 2015 18:37:15 GMT

Anytime my credit UTI drops from 30% down to under 15% I usually see about 20 point jump in my credit reports.

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Thomas_Thumb — Sat, 22 Aug 2015 19:24:13 GMT

@happy0510 wrote:
I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1% ish mark soon.

Please share your point changes!

I had no point change going from 1% UT to 6% UT and back to 1% UT.

You could see a 30 point increase going from over 50% to under 10%. Likely very little change going from 9% to 1% (if same # cards reporting abalance).

Keep % of cards reporting a non zero balance to under 50% - just one card reporting a balance might be ideal even if it is 20% to 30% - as long as overall UT remains undeer 10%.

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

ddemari — Sat, 29 Aug 2015 05:12:43 GMT

Recently I paid off a bunch of cc bills. My utilization went from 12% down to 7% so far, once the last batch of cards report in early september I will be down to 3% utilization across the CRA's.

So far my score has not been bumped up. I even had a few cards that had 30 to 45 percent utilization reporting, now report as 0 and no bump still.

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Thomas_Thumb — Sat, 29 Aug 2015 12:12:20 GMT

@ddemari wrote:
Recently I paid off a bunch of cc bills. My utilization went from 12% down to 7% so far, once the last batch of cards report in early september I will be down to 3% utilization across the CRA's.

So far my score has not been bumped up. I even had a few cards that had 30 to 45 percent utilization reporting, now report as 0 and no bump still.

ddemari, Thanks for the info.

Can you provide additional details on change in # or % of cards reporting a non zero balance. We are always trying to fill in some gaps on what thresholds exist for various factors - also thresholds appear to be profile dependent. Do you have any Derogs in your file.

Given the large # of cards in your Sig, % cards reporting may be a better metric than # reporting. BTW - how may cards do you have?

1) Evidence is pretty strong that score is negatively impacted if 0% or 100% of cards report a non zero balance. I have reported balances on 2 of 6 cards up to 5 of 6 cards with no Fico 8 score change - have not tested 6 of 6 myself. Another clean profile saw no change reporting balances on 1 of 5 up through 4 of 5 but saw a drop at 5 of 5 cards reporting. A profile with some Derog(s) reported seeing a repeatable score drop at 3 of 9 cards reporting but no score difference between 1 of 9 and 2 of 9.

2) On an individual card basis I have not experienced any Fico 8 score change when cards reported high UT% so I would not expect 30% or 45% to impact your score.

3) I am surprised that dropping aggregate UT% from 12% to 7% had no score impact. Sometimes changes take awhile to update. Please share more data on this in September.

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Aug 2015 15:44:54 GMT

Taking the most basic of advice here, this is what happened to my "mortgage scores" in the first month reading here, by moving my reported utilization to a single card and getting it down below 10% (it was less than 20% total previously spread across all my 3 cards). No other changes! Full disclosure: 2 mortage lines open, 1 car loan, 3 credit cards, 3 public records, no other baddies.

I was pulling Experian for testing as I had other weird things going on with EQ at the time and TU mortgage wasn't provided back then.