100 point difference?

[Barneygirl]

I am at a complete loss in trying to make sense of what's going on with my FICO scores.

I have a 100 point difference between my EQ/TU mortgage scores and my EX mortgage score.

I've scoured over the differences and the kicker is that I actually all of the same accounts, but MORE negative info on my EX report! I have two additional inquiries, two very old (30 day) late payments AND a very old paid judgment....but that mortgage score is 718 and the other two are 618 and 621!!

I was expecting that EX would be my lowest score since I still have old crud on that bureau's report, but it's actually my highest by 100 points!

Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

It sounds like your lower score bureau has some piece of negative information that the other two don't.  What are you using to look at your reports?  If it's a monitoring service, perhaps getting hard copies of your real reports is the way to go as they may show something different.

100 points suggests the presence of a major derog or the difference between 1% utilization and maxed out utilization, for example.  These are major differences that should be easy to see.  I get it that it's frustrating that you aren't seeing the difference, but it has got to be there somewhere...

[Barneygirl]

I monitor all scores through the bureau's themselves plus pull FICO scores off myfico.

I've been through all three and the odd thing is that my utilization is the same on all three. And, here's the part I don't get, I have MORE derogatory marks on the report I have the higher score on!! It's totally baffling!!

[Barneygirl]

In fact, and this truly surprises me, the report with the highest score has a judgement on it that doesn't show on the other two lower scores reports!!

[Anonymous]

Do you have one or more open loans on your EX report?  And are they mostly (but not entirely) paid off?

If so, this would explain part of that 100 point difference.  The EX mortgage model rewards you for having open loans that are mostly (but not entirely) paid off.  The mortgage model used by TU and EQ does not.

Of course this would only explain a part of that 100 point difference, not the majority of it.

There must be something subtle that you are not seeing.  Or it is possible that one or more of your derogs is punished by FICO 04 (the model used by EQ/TU) far more harshly than it is by FICO 98 (the model used by EX).

[805orbust]

Probably a bucketing issue. My EQ score is 50 points lower than my EX and b 40 points lower than my TU. All reports are clean, no derogs, lates, judgements or any of that crap. The ONLY difference is there are 3 old satisfactory paid accounts that are still reporting to EQ. A mortgage, an old HELOC, and an old car note. All paid as agreed, no negative history. All 3 originated between 05 and 07. It leaves me with a huge score discrepancy most likely caused by the Age of Oldest Account, total Number of Accounts, and whatever bucket assignment this puts me in... total bull. Penalized on the bureau with the longest history.  Gotta love it.