Address change dropped score 30 pts

[AKO17]

My mother is going through a divorce and has recently changed her address on one of her credit card accounts. I signed her up for myfico to monitor her reports throughout this process and noticed two alerts that dropped her score more than 30 points, stating the address change as the cause. Nothing else has changed. Will this recover? She has excellent scores, in the mid 800s. This has dropped one of her scores under 800. 

[thornback]

The address change did not drop her score, something else unrelated had to happen. The event of a change of address triggered an alert which, in turn, resulted in an update of her scores which just happen to reflect a decrease that took place sometime prior. FICO does not consider addresses in scoring.

Did all scores change or was it just one bureau?

You may need to do a thorough, side by side comparison between the current and previous reports to make sure nothing new has been reported & also check for utilization increases.

[AKO17]

Looking back at the report, it was two bureaus. I assume the third will update soon. No changes at all to her credit. Very strange that her score would drop over 30 points for no reason. I cannot find any other differences other than the address change. I have been a myfico member for quite some time and feel confident in my ability to find discrepancies within reports. This one has me stumped. 

[thornback]

Okay then. Time to look at account aging. Accounts age on the 1st of the month, every month. It's possible her oldest account aged beyond a threshold which caused a scorecard reassignment (rebucketing). That could have caused a decrease in scores - and it's not an obvious reason. It just happened to me on Feb. 1st. I lost big points across the board.

You can search the forum for 'scorecard reassignment' / 'scorecard segmentation' for more detailed info - but basically, she may have been moved to a higher FICO scoring card - and is now compared to other, new folks that may have slightly better profiles, perhaps longer histories - so instead of being a superstar at the top of her bucket, now she's just a star at the bottom of the bucket, so her score dropped.

Also - make sure no old, closed accounts fell off after hitting the 10 year mark. If there is truly no other notable change - then rebucketing is the only other explanation i can think of.

[Anonymous]

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@AKO17 wrote:

 No changes at all to her credit. Very strange that her score would drop over 30 points for no reason. I cannot find any other differences other than the address change. I have been a myfico member for quite some time and feel confident in my ability to find discrepancies within reports. This one has me stumped. 

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Stumped perhaps, but understand that something did indeed change.  Credit scores can't change 30 points for no reason.  In fact, they can't change 1 point for no reason.  Scores are generated from 1 thing, bureau data.  If a score changes, it's can only be because the bureau data changed, as that's what's fed through the algorithm to produce the score.  I have no idea what changed between the before/after reports, but it was definitely something other than just an address.

[Anonymous]

Wow I’m really grateful that you wrote this thread and to hear these guys respond that are so experienced. This cleared up a misconception I didn’t even know that I had. I was under the impression that multiple addresses did cause a couple point loss as it indicated less stability. Thanks guys!

[Anonymous]

Personal info on your CR like address, name, employers etc. are not factors that the FICO algorithm looks at, thus they don't impact scoring.  Then there are factors on your accounts that can't impact score, such as "comments" or "high balance" for example.

[Anonymous]

I had thought multiple name variations also caused penalty. Thanks for clearing that up BBS!

[Anonymous]

No problem.  If it did, I'd have several penalties, as my name is represented 3 ways on my CRs:  First Name, Last Name... First Name, Last Name, Suffix... First Name, Suffix, Last Name.

[Anonymous]

I also thought it affected the score some how. Did you figure it out?