Anyone have data on Short Credit History?

[DollyLama]

Like to know when it possibly graduate to no longer being considered short history. Last 3B report March 2017 shows short credit history as negative factor on scores. 

EQ Oldest 10 YRS 5 MO, AAoA 4 YRS 10 MO

TU Oldest 10 YRS 5 MO , AAoA 4 YRS 3 MO

EX Oldest 12 YRS 3 MO, AAoA 4 YRS 8 MO

[Anonymous]

When interpreting FICO's reason codes, it's always nice to have the exact wording as it appears.  Can you give that to us?

My memory is that the age related codes can be ambiguous. 

I think the "no longer considered short history" is arbitrary (i.e. if your question is: what do I have to do to make the reason code not show up any more?).  To extract every possible point from your age-related scores you'd likely need an Age of Oldest at > 30 years and an AAoA > 16 years (though who knows for sure). 

The good news is that an AAoA of 4.0 is respectable and so is an Age of Oldest > 10.0.  But if you already have enough cards, then there's no reason not to keep gardening and shoot for an AAoA of > 6.0 (say).

As I am sure you realize, your current scores are being held back by other things, not really age.  As a benchmark, I believe that there's been reports of people achieving an 850 with an AAoA as low as 8.0.

[HeavenOhio]

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@Anonymous wrote:
My memory is that the age related codes can be ambiguous.

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 Depending on where I look at my FICO scores, my account ages are both new and old.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@DollyLama wrote:

Like to know when it possibly graduate to no longer being considered short history. Last 3B report March 2017 shows short credit history as negative factor on scores. 

EQ Oldest 10 YRS 5 MO, AAoA 4 YRS 10 MO

TU Oldest 10 YRS 5 MO , AAoA 4 YRS 3 MO

EX Oldest 12 YRS 3 MO, AAoA 4 YRS 8 MO

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According to the rhetoric on reports high achievers have "an average age of accounts of 11 years and age of oldest account of 25 years". Best I can tell above 8 years for AAoA and 15 years for age of oldest should be adequate.

Side note: Installment loans appear to be looked at as a separate factor relative to age.

When my EQ Fico 4 score drops below 800, I get a negative factor for: "you have not established a long installment credit history" although I have an open 15 year mortgage on file with 11.5 years of payment history. Unfortunately my prior paid off mortgages have fallen off my report.

When I temporarily dropped below 850 on TU Fico 4 Bankcard last year, I received a negative factor that reads: "You have a short credit history". This is interesting given my credit history on all CRA reports is over 32 years old and AAoA is over 16 years.. All I can conclude is the short credit history must refer to a specific type of credit - not history in general.

[DollyLama]

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@Anonymous wrote:

When interpreting FICO's reason codes, it's always nice to have the exact wording as it appears.  Can you give that to us?

 It is just in the red down arrow as negative factors, stated the average age of high FICO achievers........not looking currently at an 850 goal now with exceptional, just curious when it would not show as a factor.  Thank you for the response.

My memory is that the age related codes can be ambiguous. 

I think the "no longer considered short history" is arbitrary (i.e. if your question is: what do I have to do to make the reason code not show up any more?).  To extract every possible point from your age-related scores you'd likely need an Age of Oldest at > 30 years and an AAoA > 16 years (though who knows for sure). 

The good news is that an AAoA of 4.0 is respectable and so is an Age of Oldest > 10.0.  But if you already have enough cards, then there's no reason not to keep gardening and shoot for an AAoA of > 6.0 (say).

Have 2 situations here, the age of the oldest accounts are all old installment loans, and will age off in a year.  My newest credit will only be my credit cards, with the oldest begin about 2 years of age. Second, I would garden if I had the "right" cards, have 3 store which is fine, my only MC/Visa is a very low sub prime card with a $99 annual fee, they do not increase line of credits at all,  and very low SL. My store card have increased CL.  I did a ask for a increase with a soft pull. I have not been credit seeking, that is a positive, but have wanted to apply now for a decent Visa/MC that will grow for me.  My drawback is my husband and I would like to in 18 months seek a mortgage, and I don't know how lenders look at having a subprime low limit card, regardless of scores, if I did not apply for a decent card and just kept gardening. 

As I am sure you realize, your current scores are being held back by other things, not really age.  As a benchmark, I believe that there's been reports of people achieving an 850 with an AAoA as low as 8.0.

Yes, some medical collections which I'm currently tackling, 4 of 5 should be dropping off by end of month, as I did a PFD and confirmation in writing. They stated didn't report till April 15th. It will leave me with a $34 medical with the worst CA in the world reporting to 2 bureaus, 2015. I'm going to try to get the hospital recall the debt. 

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[Anonymous]

Yeah, given everything as you describe it, I would wait till you get as many derogs off as you can (all in the next 30 days), during which time you can optimize your CC balances (All Zero Except One, with a small balance on the remaing card).

Then apply for the card you want given your now much better scores.

Then garden with the awareness that your score will go down, perhaps significantly, when your Age of Oldest drops from 12 years to 2 or 3.  There's nothing you can do about that... unless your husband, father, or mother have a very old card they could add you to as an AU.  I still feel that with all your derogs gone (that should be a goal) and perfect CC balances reporting, you should be ok.

If you think that you will have no installment accounts on your reports, closed or open, by the time that you begin shopping for a house, then I would implement the SS loan technique soon.  The EQ and TU mortgage models don't care about installment utilization (though EX does) -- but all FICO models care about credit mix, and with no installment accounts of any kind you will be penalized.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, my oldest account (Navient) is 22-23 years old and my AAoA is about 8.7, again due to Navient (though for some reason TU is still reporting the Chase Visa closed in my 2014 BK as being open, thus adding to the AAoA there; I need to fix that).

[Revelate]

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@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

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@DollyLama wrote:

Like to know when it possibly graduate to no longer being considered short history. Last 3B report March 2017 shows short credit history as negative factor on scores. 

EQ Oldest 10 YRS 5 MO, AAoA 4 YRS 10 MO

TU Oldest 10 YRS 5 MO , AAoA 4 YRS 3 MO

EX Oldest 12 YRS 3 MO, AAoA 4 YRS 8 MO

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According to the rhetoric on reports high achievers have "an average age of accounts of 11 years and age of oldest account of 25 years". Best I can tell above 8 years for AAoA and 15 years for age of oldest should be adequate.

Side note: Installment loans appear to be looked at as a separate factor relative to age.

When my EQ Fico 4 score drops below 800, I get a negative factor for: "you have not established a long installment credit history" although I have an open 15 year mortgage on file with 11.5 years of payment history. Unfortunately my prior paid off mortgages have fallen off my report.

When I temporarily dropped below 850 on TU Fico 4 Bankcard last year, I received a negative factor that reads: "You have a short credit history". This is interesting given my credit history on all CRA reports is over 32 years old and AAoA is over 16 years.. All I can conclude is the short credit history must refer to a specific type of credit - not history in general.

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Late reply but there's actually (at least) 3:

• Short credit history
• You have not established a long installment credit history
• You have not established a long revolving credit history

Presumably the first is general, either AAOA or AOOA or some conflation of the two; the other two are straight forward, and you can have multiple in one's reason codes at the same time... on TU currently I have both short credit history, and the lack of long revolving credit history on both FICO 8 and FICO 04 models.  Also they may have different weights and age factors on different industry options.

Dolly; some Googling I just did suggests these are going to be on our reports for a good while longer looking at old anecdotal data.