@Anonymous wrote:So I filed bankruptcy 3 years ago and credit cards been love hate with me. After bankruptcy I have a secure loan, a car loan and 4 cards plus a fingerhut account. My goal is to secure a mortgage and a downpayment assistance but to do that I need a 620 middle score. I am about 30 points off and each of my scores are hugely different highest being mid 600s and lowest being mid 500s. Today I started attempting 609 letters to see if that will help me. I have items on my credit from before bankruptcy that still has the lates reported so trying to get those off. Also Barclay has me for a 30 and 60 late from Jan and Feb this year which killed me. They told me a death of an immediate family member is not grounds for deletion.so that sits on my credit eventhough they credited me back the late fees. One mortgage company told me if I pay off all my credit cards they can get me a USDA loan I told them if I had the money to pay off all my credit cards I would have money for a FHA 3% downpayment. Is there any advice people can offer besides paying down my credit to 30%?
yes. pay all your CC's down to zero, except for ONE cc, and let that ONE cc report less than 9%. You'll gain 5-10 pts just doing that alone. What you dont want to do is pay off all your cards to zero balance like the guy told you. FICO doesnt like that, and cant score you if there's nothing to score revolving wise. So, to keep it simple.....if you have 5 revolving CC's, pay 4 of them to zero balance. That 5th one....pay down to 1-9% of the CL....for example...CL $300...let no more than $27 (9%) report.
Also, with Barclays....they are kinda tough. Just so you know, lates AFTER a BK DC is really bad. Best thing you can do is the "saturation method" to the EO, and plead your case. Type it in the search box and you'll read about it here on the forums.
As regards to older accts reporting lates.....if you were late on them before you filed BK, then they are reporting correctly. What they cant do is continue to report you late after your file date on accts that were IIB. At this point with the BK...fall off date goes from DOFD.
Good luck to you, and welcome to the boards!!! 