Credit Karma shows over 100 point drop in a week.

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

I have been working on building my credit for about a year now. I had a tax lein last January that was released a few months later. I don't have anything else bad except a couple of late credit card payments two/three years ago. Everything recent is on time and no collections. My credit score just dropped 124 points on Equifax and 109 points on Transunion. The only thing I did was pay $1,000 towards one credit card balance, and my utilization is still 60% down from almost 95% with that card. Not one other change was made. The tax lein has been there for a year. 

Any ideas on why this would happen? Experian didn't change. 

 Feb 11th I was 654 and Feb 19th 545 on TU. And 647/523 on Equifax. That is a huge drastic change in one week with me not doing anything other than paying down my credit card that was closer to the limit. I thought I was doing so good slowly improving things, I would appreciate any help. 

Melissa

[Anonymous]

  Sounds like a new bucket.  Once your % use drops it will start coming back.  Also as the bad ones drop off it will come back.  Tax Liens can cause huge hits.  The good news you were probably maxed out in the old bucket so it could go not get higher it it.  With the new probably a very high cap. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you, I will research the bucket thing. What a set back! The tax lein sucks but it was paid in a few months and has been sitting there on my report for a year. Nothing else bad. 

[Anonymous]

Other factors such as a thin file or low aa combined with tax release could put you in a new bucket but toward the bottom.   It will come back.  At one point last year I had almost 815 scorse across the board with a thin old profile.  This was because of 2006-2008.  I chased credit limits down  and closed alot when they got to small limits. When I opened new cards last year  I took several huge hits.   Now a year later a have a wallet full  of tier one cards with good limits  but low aa and a score I hope will see 750 inthe next 10 to 12 months.   I am not planning an buying a house anytime soon a car maybe by end of year so  I am not the least bit worried.  I  PIF every month but because of float my use reports around 15 to 20%.  The CLI should fix that. 

[Anonymous]

Well I just signed up here at my Fico for the monitoring and every bureau is over 660, so who knows what the heck is happening! That is so strange. I have a mortgage, I would just like to get a cosigner off so that is my only concern. I haven't had a hard credit inquiry in two years, and nothing much going on. I only have a couple of credit cards, I will pay them down below 10% and see what happens. Thank you for your advice and good luck to you! 

[Anonymous]

I think the people at myfico are by far the nicest and most helpful.  Also CK has wide swingss  and oftens varies 75 points from real FICO scores. 

[Revelate]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Well I just signed up here at my Fico for the monitoring and every bureau is over 660, so who knows what the heck is happening! That is so strange. I have a mortgage, I would just like to get a cosigner off so that is my only concern. I haven't had a hard credit inquiry in two years, and nothing much going on. I only have a couple of credit cards, I will pay them down below 10% and see what happens. Thank you for your advice and good luck to you! 

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As others have suggested Credit Karma (VantageScore 3.0) is simply different than the FICO algorithms.

I gained 84 points apparently on Credit Karma the other day for Transunion: shifted to a different bucket (scorecard) apparently as some combination of inquiries and a 30D late passed some threshold seemingly.  Hard to say but it's back in line with my EX/EQ VS 3 now.

FICO didn't move.  Actually dropped a few points from a seemingly unrelated change.  

When we're talking mortgage, Vantage is absolutely irrelevant: the scores you're worried about are found here.  Optimize for FICO, ideally for revolving utilization a small balance on one card and zero's on everything else works just fine and yeah 60% utilization is leaving points on the table.

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Mortgage-Loans/FICO-scores-used-for-mortgage-and-where-to-obtain-them/td-p/3817869

[Anonymous]

Did you actually look at your report on CK as well as the score?

Just wondering if maybe a new baddie showed up.

[Dalmus]

I've noticed that two or three times a year, CK will suddenly report a huge drop in a score, and then with the next update, it bounced right back to where it was.  I just chalk it up to a glitch in their data... something was (or wasn't) "seen" properly on the credit bureau data, but reappears/disappears with the next data grab.