Hi Sonatina! So glad you are still checking in and that you have been visiting the forums.
You mention that to pay off all of one's CC debt is an obvious goal that pretty much all consumers share and want, that it kinda goes without saying. I am not sure I agree here. Many consumers carry CC debt and a lot of it. People typically do the things they want to do -- so I think these consumers for the most part like being indebted, since it allows them to buy stuff now rather than save and wait. Paying off all their CC debt is not on their radar at all.
Thus, I think it was pretty reasonable for folks here to stress that (in their opinion) you should pay off all your debt. It was fair for them to assume that this wouldn't be an obvious goal. Indeed, even after they said it, you are still planning not to pay yours off. Your plan is to pay yours down to 10% but no lower. That's totally your call -- but it goes to show you how paying off all CC debt is not a goal shared by everyone.
I was pleased to hear, however, that all of your concerns are aimed at a very concrete goal: namely buying a house. Happily, this is something we here can give you very clear guidance on. You should want the following:
* A total utilization of < 8.99%. (That's all cards with their limits considered together.) You will still experience a scoring penalty at 10%
* As many $0 credit card balances as possible. The mortgage scoring models are different from FICO 8, and they go out of their way to reward you for creating as many $0 balances as you can. The exception is that you do want one card showing a positive balance.
* All cards showing an individual utilization < 28.99%. In other words, the one card that shows a positive balance doesn't have to be at < 10% for its individual util, which is good in your case since your plan is not pay off all your CC debt.
If you can do these three things you will get a big scoring boost.
Paying down your automobile loan further (which you indicate as part of your plan) will not help your EQ and TU mortgage scores at all. It might help your EX mortgage score, though we'd need to know the current amount you owe on all open installment loans and the total amount that all the loans were for originally. The bottom line is that the auto paydown is probably a bad use for your cash -- saving it toward the home down payment is probably a lot smarter.
Now, how to achieve those three bulleted goals above is a different matter. Part of your strategy might involve as you say pursuing CLIs (as long as they are soft inqiuries). You may decide to use the Snowball Method for paying down your debt -- that may be an especially good fit for you because it stresses creating lots of $0 CC balances. The one thing I would definitely avoid is opening any more credit cards.
I would suggest that you develop a plan for optimizing your CC balances as per the recomendations above. Then after those new CC balances are all reporting to the three CRAs, pull your FICO mortgage scores, You can do that here at myFICO for $30.
Those scores will give you an idea as to whether there is anything else you might need to do to your profile before you go through pre-approval.
