I figured I would weigh in on the Chase Sapphire Preferred. I've been studying credit scores/reports/doing research on this card for about 4 months now. A year ago, my credit scores were 580-600, and woke up this morning to a Credit Karma update (VantageScore 3.0) of an Equifax score of 715 and TransUnion of 709. My current credit card utilization is 6%, using $316 of a $5400 combined credit limit, so that played in my favor this morning as well. Also, I checked for prequalified offers from Chase regularly, and never found one that they had selected for me. The only prequalified offers I get is for the AmEx Green Card.
It has taken a lot of hard work paying down balances and letting some things fall off my report in the past year to get to this point. I hired Blue Sky Credit to help clean up my credit report, and retained their services for about 4 months. I got my student loans out of default and have paid for MyFico and IdentityIQ credit report and score monitoring services for more than a year. I read The Points Guy religiously and read the forums here routinely. When my scores hit the 690s, Credit Karma said I had "very good" odds of approval, but still wasn't totally convinced.
I just had a WellsFargo secured card with 2 years and 6 months history with a $400 limit convert into a secured card because of good payment history with them. They gave me a $700 unsecured limit and returned my deposit within 10 days. I have an existing Capital One secured card with a $200 limit with an age of 2 years 5 months, but was also 30 days late on that payment in August 2015 (not smart on my part). 11 months ago, I applied for a Quicksilver One with Capital One and was approved for a $2,500 limit. 6 months later, they raised my limit to $4,500 without my asking, keeping that utilization pretty high (well over 50%) for the entire time, and always paying on time.
So I didn't have an existing credit line of at least $5,000, have more than $80,000 in student loan debt, personal income of about $60K, only $5400 total credit line, and I took a stab at the Chase Sapphire Preferred this morning, and was approved for a $9,000 limit instantly with a 20.99% APR.
Wanted to share my story and statistics because it truly is different for everyone. I was under Chase's 5/24 rule, having applied for only one credit card within the past 24 months, so I am certain that probably played in my favor. But as far as needing an existing credit line of at least $5,000, having credit of a certain age, etc. none of that seemed to matter to them. So excited though for my approval, so I encourage people to just apply if their scores are at least 700 and have no chargeoffs on your report and are under the 5/24 rule often mentioned about Chase.
