Mortgage Credit Scores

[Anonymous]

Is it common for Mortgage scores to be lower than FICO 8 and FICO 9?

[Anonymous]

It's common in my and my wife's world, and it doesn't make much sense to me.  We've been paying on a mortgage successfully, with no late payments ever, since 2004.

[Anonymous]

Same here. Since 2000. It just doesn't make sense. Thanks for the reply.

[JVille]

Yes VERY common. The other scores give you a false sense of security. The reason codes within a single CA can actually seem to be totally conflicting. Ex: Fico 8 might say no negative issues, the Mtg Fico score says too many late pmts. In this particular example (its me) I have 2 30 day lates almost 4 yrs ago. Somehow I disabled Autopay and didn’t notice

[avp99]

pretty typical

[DollyLama]

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@Anonymous wrote:

It's common in my and my wife's world, and it doesn't make much sense to me.  We've been paying on a mortgage successfully, with no late payments ever, since 2004.

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Just info for anyone following this thread, you need not have a current or previous mortgage to have mortgage scores. 

[iv]

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@DollyLama wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

It's common in my and my wife's world, and it doesn't make much sense to me.  We've been paying on a mortgage successfully, with no late payments ever, since 2004.

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Just info for anyone following this thread, you need not have a current or previous mortgage to have mortgage scores. 

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Indeed.

It's important to realize that what we call "mortgage scores" are not actually specific to mortgage lending, nor do they factor in mortgage loans to a greater degree than any other FICO model.

They just happen to be the specific set of FICO "Classic" scores that the giants in the mortgage room (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) have declared to be their required standard scores for mortgage loans.

This is unlike the "Auto" or "Bankcard" FICO models, that are actually "tuned" for the car loan and credit card markets, or the now obsolete FICO "Mortgage" models (which never managed to replace the trifecta of EQ5/TU4/EX2 Classic as the designated "mortgage scores", and were not/are not used for mortgage lending).

Yeah, it doesn't exactly make a great deal of sense, I know...

[Anonymous]

So which scores do they use? When I got my first mortgage I was in my very early twenties and my brother and I knew nothing about credit but did manage to get a loan with 6% interest. Not great but for 2 young 20 somethings with no clue it seemed good.

[iv]

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@Anonymous wrote:
So which scores do they use? When I got my first mortgage I was in my very early twenties and my brother and I knew nothing about credit but did manage to get a loan with 6% interest. Not great but for 2 young 20 somethings with no clue it seemed good.

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Currently, and for quite a few years, it's been what is currently called:

• Equifax Score 5
• Transunion Score 4
• Experian Score 2

And not the "Auto" or "Bankcard" versions - just "Score X". Referred to as "Classic" in some places.

These are the names used if you pull a 3B report on myFICO, for instance.

The previous common names for these scores (before the recent standardization of names) were:

• Equifax Beacon® 5.0
• TransUnion FICO® Risk Score, Classic 04
• Experian®/Fair Isaac Risk Model V2SM

You might see a mortgage lender still using the old names, but it's the same scores/models as above.

Depending on how long ago your very early twenties were... you might have had different models applied.

(I know my first mortgage pre-dated at least two of these score models, and at least one of the models used back then would be retroactively named "Score 1" if they had bothered pushing the standardized naming back that far.)

But for well over a decade, it's been the EQ5/TU4/EX2 set.

If that changes, you'll definitely hear about it - whether Freddie/Fannie do it on their own, or a change is mandated by law... in either case it'll hit the news in a big way.