Thanks so much for the replies. I wanted to respond with an update on my situation in case my tale might be able to help others who also thought they were invincible.
After all the denials, we totally stopped applying (well, allllmost, but more on that later) and started begging for recons. My spouse was able to convince Chase to grant him a Freedom Unlimited card, which nets 3% back on anything within the first year up to $20,000. We both easily convinced U.S. Bank to issue us Cash+ cards — even though neither of us have ever been U.S. Bank customers. They were actually super-duper friendly. Their CSR looked over my credit report and basically said, "Oh, yeah. It looks like you have a bunch of inquries because you just bought a house. You'll be fine." We had the cards a few days later and activated the furniture and electronic store bonus categories.
The only wall we hit was Citi. Wow. They were sooo rude. When I called for recon, the CSR treated me like I was garbage. She refused to tell me why I was denied or have a human do a manual review. Her advice? I needed to hire a financial coach to help me understand my credit. Ha! I called back a few days later hoping to speak to someone with a better attitude, but it was the same nasty woman. I did send a letter to the Citi executice office and waited a month for a response, which was a waste of time. They still denied me! I was so offended by their treatment that we actually stopped using our existing Citi cards.
After that debacle, against my better judgement, I applied for Samsung financing to buy a few appliances. You guessed it. TD Bank denied me for that, too. Fortunately, it was overturned after a somewhat lengthy recon. We ended up buying everything we needed for our new home from Samsung and across those four new cards (and one exsisting one). A few of them offer 0% financing, so that's good.
The lesson here is don't expect banks to roll out the red carpet after buying a new home and having your credit pulled a gazillion times — even if you think your credit is flawless! I obviously didn't expect what affect that would have on my credit situation. Also, I can't recommend U.S. Bank and their Cash+ card enough. (No, this is not a paid promotion.) We're actually going to open a few non-credit accounts with them because their customer service was so outstanding, and I'd rather support a bank like that versus Citi. Yikes.
Anyway, thanks again for all of the support. You folks rock.
