So, I am due to close on my mortgage in a month, I missed a payment in July, reported in August as late, my mortgage score dropped from 742 to 636. The payment was missed because I had setup a recurring payment on my account, and for some reason the feature got messed up when I had to make a miscellaneous one-time payment (property tax) on my car, which then disabled the payment feature. I didn't check my account thinking it was all good, got no texts, no emails informing me otherwise, though I did see statements in the mail that I didn't check because I wasn't in town. I asked for goodwill adjustments, almost all of them responded with "we don't see a dispute, it's all reported correctly, please tell us what was incorrect", and at this point I've given up.
What surprised me was when I subscribed to myFico and checked my scores as of 10/17, the mortgage score had increased from 636 to 670, and my fico8 score, which was 739 before the drop and went down to 690 after, went back up to 713. The mortgage scores are the same scores the lender is using right? Because I find it difficult to believe how my score just shot up 34 points and all I did was bring my account back to current and put a small balance on one of my credit cards, which are almost always 0 balance. My other credit card hasn't reported to the bureaus yet as my statement hasn't been cut for October, I wonder is it wise to keep a small balance on it too or would that not help or would it even potentially hurt my credit/mortgage score?
My lender also told me that 680 is where the massive impact happens in terms of rates, and since I only have less than a month, could my score go up that much? I was surprised it went up 34 points in such a short time that I wonder if it's possible it will go up another 10 if I make on time payments for this month. I also tried the simulator for FICO8, and at least for equifax, it's showing the score going up by 10 with just a single month's payments on time. Is this not unusual?
