Mortgage Misclassified as Revolving Loan - What should I do?

[Anonymous]

I have no "conventional" mortgage and essentially zero credit card debt. I do have a home equity loan that had a draw period followed by a pay-back period. The draw period ended several years ago, and I'm in payback and fully in compliance with terms. The loan is secured by a mortgage on the house. Equifax classifies this as a "revolving" account and the high balance hurts my FICO. Should I write them a letter to get it reclassified as a mortgage? Is this likely to work and is it likely to help my FICO by having a mortgage instead of revolving balance? The amount is by mortgage standards pretty small ($38k) but by revolving loan standards pretty high.

[llecs]

Unfortunately, most HELOCs are classified as a revolving account by FICO. Logic is that you have a high balance or limit and you are drawing from that and is to be paid back later...like a CC.

[Anonymous]

So I guess my issue is with FICO and not the credit bureau or lender.

On a CC or other true revolving loan I'd be able to keep drawing, but this loan had a fixed draw period (I think it was 2 years) and has been in the repayment period for several years with no fresh draws allowed. And since it's secured by the house, it's effectively just a mortgage at this time - and a tiny one at that - so it should be helping my score rather than hurting it, or so it seems to me. Of course logic may not enter FICO.

Does FICO have any mechanism for dealing with individual issues like this? Alternatively I guess I could take out a true mortgage to pay this loan off. Ironically though it's so small by mortgage standards I'd have trouble finding a lender who's interested. And _really_ ironically, I'm only paying 2.5% interest on the HELOC due to the poor indexing choice the lender made when I took it out.