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Its been about 2 months since I have been declined entrance into the Citi credit card line-up. Reason for the decline was an excessive amount of recent inquiries. Since then, I've been in the garden, sharpening my claw and teeth and waiting for the perfect ambush opportunity to overtake CITI.
Is it recommended that I wait a full 6 months before proceeding?
Current state of my credit game is:
Low util at around 15% ~ 20% (will try to bring it down to 9%)
Credit score of around 720 across the 3 major bureaus
No late payments
$26,000 Total CL
How many inquiries did you have?
Many lenders consider inquiries during the last 12 months as recent, although some only look at inquiries in the last 6 months. So a 6 month wait is a reasonable compromise.
After an inquiry ages 12 months you no longer incur a penalty on your credit scores, and after 24 months it is removed from your credit reports (25 months for Experian).
In my personal experience Citi has proven to be a fickle creature. When my credit was in the tank they hounded me with pre-approvals for the DC card. I finally relented and received a $700 SL. My credit wasn't the greatest so I completely understood the limit and it became my daily driver. As my credit scores increased and I was being granted much higher limits Citi wouldn't budge on that limit. It was almost at the one year mark before I received a whopping $500 CLI.
In the meantime I has been helping my mother repair her credit and Citi saw fit to give her a limit of 3K even though her reports were worse than mine at the time. I guess my point is that there seems to be no real consistancy with how Citi views an applicant. They may love you from the get-go or they may shun you for a longer period of time than you deem to be warranted.
The only reason was too many inquiries.
My score sits around 725 right now. By the time I app for CITIBANK again, it should be closer to high 700s due to low utilization.
I recently requested a CLI with BOFA and CAPITAL ONE. Was this a bad move? Would this reset my gardening time?
I would just wait it out at his point; the longer/stronger the record the more likely they'll approve it.
+1 as everyone else has said 6 months no new inq's/accts seems to be the minimum to get in. You can always check Citi pre-approvals too.
Citi seems to be inquiry sensitive.
Some years ago I had applied for citi secured card and got denied for excessive inquiries (had like 40+).
I had gardened for 2 years and all inquiries fell off. had 0 on my report. applied for citi secured and boom got approved. since then It has unsecured! still with paltry useless 200 limit that they won't budge on. from what I've gathered I'll be better off applying for a new citi card if I want a higher limit.