I just don't get it!

[Anonymous]

Last month I simply made my mortgage payment.  Transunion then lowered my score by 18 points due to "balance on all your mortgage accounts changed".  I have been paying on my home for 8 years.  Never missed a payment.  And now I am docked because I made a regular payment?  I pay 3.54%. Interest.  And the value of my home has gone up 10% this past year.  I called Transunion and NO ONE there could explain it. Can anyone help me understand this?

[Anonymous]

Where did you see that message? ... was it on myFICO? If so, don't sweat it. Other changes likely occurred, but didn't trigger a score update. A huge drawback of myFICO monitoring. Triggers cause so much confusion. Every so often someone will post about getting an alert their scores increased after a hard pull. Crazy stuff, but is due to myFICO triggers missing a lot of other changes.

Visit CreditKarma.com and pull your free TransUnion / Equifax reports (ignore the scores, which are usually way off, since those are Vantage 3 not FICOs) to view details. Nice thing about CK is it saves TU reports (pretty sure EQ too) so one can pull them each week and then reference back to them as needed.

[takeshi74]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Transunion then lowered my score by 18 points 

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What score?  The only score TransUnion would lower would be their own New Accounts Model which no creditor uses.  Any change to a FICO would not be made by TransUnion as FICO's are not a TransUnion product but a FICO product.

To understand any scoring change you have to carefully review reports from before and after the change to ensure that you're accounting for all factors.

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@Anonymous wrote:

due to "balance on all your mortgage accounts changed". 

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Where is this message coming from?  If you're using myFICO monitoring then make sure you understand that only certain activity triggers alerts and score updates while many factors that are not triggers also have a scoring impact.

http://myfico.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/463/~/understanding-what-triggers-fico%C2%AE-3-bureau-credit-monitoring-and-fico%C2%AE-identity

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@Anonymous wrote:

I pay 3.54%. Interest.  And the value of my home has gone up 10% this past year.

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These are irrelevant to credit scores.  See also:

http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx

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@Anonymous wrote:

Can anyone help me understand this?

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As I mentioned above a careful comparison of reports before and after the change would be required.  You would have to disclose the information in order for us to assist.  I'd suggest not worrying over a change of 18 points and setting a higher threshold if you're going to fixate on the numbers.  I'd strongly suggest focusing on your report data instead of the numbers.