SCORE DROP WITH 4% UTILIZATION ON CC

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to build up my score to qualify for a mortgage and was told I needed to payoff my CC debt to lower my DTI by my mortgage rep.  Well, in doing so my Experian score dropped 33 points.  I still have a 4% utilization overall which is a CC I have a utilization of 16% on.  I read previously about having your cards report 0 balance and one with at least 8%, not sure why my score dropped, I worked really hard these last 6 months.  I have not seen an impact yet with Equifax and Transunion.

Lastly, I noticed this affected my FICO 8 score and not my Mortgage FICO 2 score, which actually went up.  I'm just worried that this may affect my mortgage score as well.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm trying to build up my score to qualify for a mortgage and was told I needed to payoff my CC debt to lower my DTI by my mortgage rep.  Well, in doing so my Experian score dropped 33 points.  I still have a 4% utilization overall which is a CC I have a utilization of 16% on.  I read previously about having your cards report 0 balance and one with at least 8%, not sure why my score dropped, I worked really hard these last 6 months.  I have not seen an impact yet with Equifax and Transunion.

Lastly, I noticed this affected my FICO 8 score and not my Mortgage FICO 2 score, which actually went up.  I'm just worried that this may affect my mortgage score as well.

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If your mortgage score went up, nothing to worry about, it already went up!

It does depend what card you use for your non-zero card, it cant really be just any card for max points, but most importantly, mortgage scores want as few accounts with balances as possible.

[CreditCuriosity]

Doesn't make sense why you lost 33 points though even though mortgage score went up.  Have you pulled your report recently and did anything reappears aka baddies or anything else?  Your score would not of dropped 33 points with just paying down debt, something else had to have caused it, but you just dont know what yet.  Whether an old CO account might be reporting again or something along those lines or possibly a really old positive account that is closed dropped off your report, etc.   Not saying that is the case as don't know you credit, but something beyond paying down CC debt occurred.