Next Steps in Rebuilding...

[Anonymous]

So I paid off the 4 accounts I had in collections this year, the DOFD on all of them are August/Sept 2016 when I lost my job and all that. One is Chase, two are WF, and one is Comenity. I got myself a small beginner Capital One card in July, which boosted me a bit, am an AU on AMEX, and obtained a car loan.

I'm thinking of writing GW's to my collection's, but I had a tradeline collection account removed last month and it did nothing to my scores at all. 
Also hoping that what I heard about late payments on collections stop impacting your scores as much after 2 years, is this true? 
I'm keeping my util under 10% on both accounts, and am waiting for my new car loan to show up on my credit aswell. 

What is the next important step in this rebuilding process? Gardening? Applying for another card to have more available credit? On Experian my 'available credit' is rated as 'poor' since my Capital One CL is only $300. I guess I would even have to wait to apply for another card because my credit still isn't good enough for a card that isn't Capital One.

[Anonymous]

Your ideal mix is a loan and 3 cards. Look at Disciver’s Secured card and maybe a BoA or Citi secured card. The limits don’t matter, managing them right does. A $200 secured card managed correctly helps as much as a $20k card.

Having a negative tradeline removed will do very little if other baddies are still there. The first one to hit your report kills you, and subsequent ones are small dings. Likewise with removal - you’ll see incremental gains as they go away, but when the last one clears, you usually see a big jump (as long as utilization isn’t out of control and you don’t have two dozen HPs). Basically it’s not the number of bad lines you have, it’s the fact that you have any that hurts you.

A GW campaign is good. It’s tedious and may not do anything, but then again it may, and like every other aspect of credit, being proactive is far better than sitting around waiting. As for the impact of lates, it depends how severe they are. 30s probably start to age and count less after 2-3 years. 60s a bit longer. 90s and 120s are severe and will hurt the entire 7 years you have them.