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@DHC5500 wrote:@Thomas_Thumb and community - I'm really impressed and appreciative of the detailed insights which are invaluable! Thank you : )
My goal is to get a middle score that puts us in the best rate bracket.
How often do the credit reports update such that a lender can see changes and adjust their underwritting accordingly?
Creditors send data to the CRAs on a monthly basis. Date varies depending on statement close date for each credit card. Although data is updated, score only changes if a potential lender pulls your report and requests a score. Data changes don't automatically trigger a rescore.
@JoeRockhead wrote:
@DHC5500 wrote:I'm applying for a mortgage and the FICO 5 says I have too many Revolving Accounts ["Number of Bank or National Revolving Accounts with Balances"] and "Too Many Consumer FInance Company Accounts".
You don't have too many revolving accounts (no such thing), you have too many revolving accounts with balances. This gets you a score penalty. If you have seven accounts, don't let more than three of them report a balance to avoid the penalty ( have to stay under 50% of revolvers). Nothing you can do about the CFAs.
@GZG has given you some good advice on how to maximize your scores.
Great advice and info in this thread. The bolded part might be susceptible to misinterpretation. Some scoring models have a negative reason statement for "You have too few or too many credit accounts." I have seen this on my TU4 when I had 26 accounts on my file (including open and closed accounts).
@GZG wrote:
@DHC5500 wrote:@GZG Do all credit cards count as consumer finance accounts? Or what would constitute a consumer finance account?
typically it's supposed to represent stuff like rent-to-own or buy now pay later stuff, but anything can be coded as a consumer finance account, even car loans directly from the manufacturer's financing
the penalty is a one off thing, you either have a CFA on your report or you don't, it's a small penalty, and there's nothing you can do it about it, not worth worrying about.
being 6/7 for balances on your revolving accounts and being over 10% utilization are far greater score suppressors and will lead to score increases when AZEO is implemented.
I would probably open disputes with the bureaus and say that a car loan should not be a CFA. The worst they can do is just not agree with you and then it stays and you're no worse off.