How to find what I would qualify for?

[Revelate]

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@Mailak wrote:

Arguments from both of you make sense to me!

Revelate - did you have other loan history? Any kind of installment loans?

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Newp, no installment loan of any type: personal, auto, or mortgage, or even student, anywhere on the credit report.  551 Auto EX pull at dealership, 599 Classic pulled from lender two days later.

If I weren't trying to get an Amex this year, I'd try applying for a re-finance with a lender that 1) pulls EX for me, and 2) uses auto-enhanced (i.e. Chase) just to see if I have a penalty with an auto loan and another installment loan reporting for more than six months now; however, it's probably not worthwhile to satisfy my own curiousity on this point.   Maybe I can get a benchmark from EQ as I think USAA will use auto-enhanced and I think my CU will use Classic.

[Mailak]

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@Revelate wrote:

Newp, no installment loan of any type: personal, auto, or mortgage, or even student, anywhere on the credit report.  551 Auto EX pull at dealership, 599 Classic pulled from lender two days later.

If I weren't trying to get an Amex this year, I'd try applying for a re-finance with a lender that 1) pulls EX for me, and 2) uses auto-enhanced (i.e. Chase) just to see if I have a penalty with an auto loan and another installment loan reporting for more than six months now; however, it's probably not worthwhile to satisfy my own curiousity on this point.   Maybe I can get a benchmark from EQ as I think USAA will use auto-enhanced and I think my CU will use Classic.

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Yes, I would think that seems like the dealer was using an auto-enhanced score (both EX, I'm assuming). Hehe, would love to see that experiment. Alas!

[MarineVietVet]

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@Revelate wrote:

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MVV,

I apologize for being pedantic but I think the issue got confused here: if a person has a FICO score as available from say, here, then they have an auto-enhanced (or credit-enhanced, or the not currently used mortgage-enhanced) industry option as well, at least from the bureau they were able to receive a FICO score from.

Doesn't matter whether someone had an auto loan or not in terms of generating the score, what does matter is the specific industry option assigns different weights to various factors: i.e. for a Classic score an auto loan is probably just a basic installment loan as far as FICO goes; however, for an auto-enhanced, your payment history on that auto loan becomes far more relevant in terms of the overall percentage it factors into the score.

In this case Maliak has an auto-enhanced score, but there's a non-zero chance that his will be lower than his normal Classic or credit-enhanced FICO.  Nobody really knows for certain, but anecdotally someone with just credit card / other revolving accounts, and student loans, typically will be lower by some amount.  In my case it was around 50 points because I didn't have an auto loan on record, but I still had an auto-enhanced score.

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You're most likely correct but after 3 years of reading thousands of posts you are the first person who has said such a thing.

I will still wait for Mailak and see what his/her experience is.

Whether I'm right or wrong is not important; having accurate information at my disposal is all that matters.

[Revelate]

Ah, just because it hasn't been explicitly stated, this was absolutely the case for me, others, and pretty much confirmed in UpNComing's thread where he sees first time buyers at his dealership on a regular basis.   I think the only reason it hasn't explicitly come up is it's simply assumed to be the case: if you can generate a regular FICO score having a tradeline reporting for six months, then any of the industry options can be generated.  They simply have different weights associated with various things in the bureau's data.

Mal with a long-established credit history IIRC will absolutely have an auto-enhanced score, whether his lenders will use it or not is a different story but it's nearly a foregone conclusion that dealer financing will.