Advice please! Credit score 804 denied for loan...

[pamsue]

I applied for a loan through Payoffl.com to consolidate and pay off my credit cards. I have been paying down the balances pretty good and not using them for a few years now. My equifax cred score is 804, trans union 787. I have no late payments, no inquiries, no derrogatory remarks. My total credit limit is $38,000 and I am using a little ovoer $8000. My credit utilization is 22% and my debit in income ratio is good. The first reason they used to deny me was they could not verify my income. I work for a company and get a w-2 and I'm also self employed owner or a business. I provided them with all of my tax return forms, including schedule c. I actually gave them copies of everything. Wouldn't my tax return be "verification of income"? The other reason is that my credit card balances are too high. Only one of my cards is over 30% utilization. This has been such a shock to me. I just cannot believe I've been denied. Trying to make some sense of all of this. Can anyone tell me something that maybe I missed or just don't know? 

[DaveInAZ]

Well, my suggestion would be try a more . . . . "mainstream" personal loan company, like Prosper. Lending Club, Discover, Marcus, etc. I'm actually on pre-screen opt out because I was getting so many pre-qual offers per week from various personal loan companies, and I've never heard of Payoff.com. And their website doesn't impress me, I checked "About Us" to see who was backing them and all they have is a bunch of pics of their staff. And I had a $5k loan from Prosper a couple years ago and I never had to provide any proof of income.

[Gunnar419]

As DaveInAZ says, it could be just the lender. I recently bought a used car. All my credit scores are over 800, but when the car dealer shotgunned my credit around (*against my stated wishes* by the way), I received several denials for reasons like yours, including from some auto finance outfit I never heard of. Unable to verify income was one of them. Also, ridiculously, I got one denial that said debt to income ratio is too high. At the time of the apps, my total, really my TOTAL, debt was $222, with monthly payments of $27.

Then I got an approval from Chase at a good rate, so sometimes there is just no accounting for these things.

[medicgrrl]

You list scores for TU & EQ...are those from Credit Karma or are they actual FICO scores

[Anonymous]

Since the loan amount is fairly low, maybe you should exclude the self employment income from your application in the future.  Should make it easier to verify quickly.  As to why they couldn't verify your income after seeing your tax returns I have no idea, and it makes no sense.  Like others have mentioned, you might have greater success with a more common lender. 

[Anonymous]

I agree with the others, a more mainstream lender may be the way to go.  I've had good success with Lending Club the past seven months with scores much lower than yours.  I was approved for a personal loan with them in 11/16 for twice the amount you're requesting at 6.99% and last week took an auto refi offer from them at a slightly better rate (2.74 vs 2.99) than my then current NFCU rate.  Very simple process, no POI or anything.  Also it a sp to check your rates and offers from them.

[pamsue]

Thank you for all of your advice/suggestions. I was thinking about applying for a blance transfer credit card. Went online and looked at prequalified offers and there are no offers for me. WTH? I am so baffled. I don't want to keep applying for credit and have my score go lower and lower. 

[medicgrrl]

Are those your FICO score?

[pamsue]

No

[medicgrrl]

I would pull your FICO scores