@Anonymous wrote:haulingthescoreup, thanks for recommending this link. very helpful. Have you had anyone post to you that it did change score. Im wanting to take care of this just scared of a score drop. talking to LO on friday to see if I can just pay at close, but whenever i do i will copy and paste to see if it changes score. Also do you know if open disputes will interfere with an automatic underwriter ( ive read it will stop a manual underwriter)
Not with before and after shots. The only person who said that their scores did change saw this back in 2008 and doesn't have any copies of the reports. The poster is a very valuable and respected member here, and I don't doubt that he/she (can't tell from the name) believes this. But I saw a lot of changes on my reports back in the day, and I was convinced that I knew exactly why they happened, only to find out with time that it wasn't so.
On the other hand, I've read quite a few posts from people that paid collections and clearly state that their scores stayed the same.
Again, it's always possible that an individual CA might do something in error (let's hope it's in error) that might change a report so that it really does result in a score change. But as long as the date of assignment is the same before payment and after, the score shouldn't change.
The FICO scoring algorithm is just a formula: it crunches what's in the various boxes and spits out a number. If the correct info is in the correct boxes, that's what counts.
eta: forgot about the automatic underwriter part. You'll need to ask over on Mortgages about that one. My assumption is that it would, because someone programmed the thing to look at all the things that the humans do. But that might not be so, so check with the experts over there. 
I do know that there are a ton of posts by those struggling to get disputes removed, because their apps are stuck until they do.
eta again: lol, I just wandered over to Mortgages, and sure enough, you're one of those with a thread about this. 
Sorry I didn't recognize your name.