Credit Score DROP!?!?!?!

[Anonymous]

To give some context here...

Back in Jan my wife and I started house hunting. Both in our 30's newly married, both employed and saving a bit, figure it's about that time. In Jan I had a FICO of 710, my wife 780+. We applied for a pre-approval, which we got and we were told would not negatively affect our scores at the time. Since then, neither of us have opened a new credit card, or gotten a loan of any sort. We have not run up our CC's and pay them down every month, pretty much. Pretty standard stuff. I have some residual loans out from college and are paying them off, slowly, but still. 

So, we found a house, went to go get a loan and now my FICO is 596?!?!?!?!?! Sorry for the language, but **bleep**?

Went to my bank, they said they could not help. Went to the 3 bureaus and they said, they can only help if there is a clear sign of identity theft. I can not see any alarms there. My wife's FICO is still fine, in the 750 range, possibly due to some debt we carried on our CC for a month or so. (side note: the CC is under her name, not mine). But really, nothing to speak of that would hurt my FICO THAT much. And worse, no one can tell me why this happened. We are probably gonna loose the house now as this is a MASSIVE hurdle. But still, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

So, my question is... What in the wide, wide world of sports in a going on here? I have no new debt, one inquiry, and have paid on time everything that I have out. On top of that, I got a raise, so my debt to income ratio should be better. 

Thoughts here?

Anything helps.

[AllZero]

@Anonymous.  Your FICO 8 scores may be different from your mortgage score, EX2, TU4, EQ5. Pull your reports and scores to review the data.

AnnualCreditReport. Free weekly 3 bureau online reports through April 2021.

Free credit reports (disregard the VantageScore 3.0 score) at:
Credit Karma for weekly TU and EQ reports.
WalletHub for daily TU report.

Free mortgage scores

EX2 + 3 Bureau scores and reports for $1 at Experian or CreditCheckTotal (part of Experian). Cancel in 7 days or less to avoid the reoccurring charge.

TU4 WyHy quarterly score. Not sure on membership requirement. Maybe hard pull TU?

EQ5 Get a savings account with DCU. Soft pull EQ to be a member. Free monthly score.

You can also obtain your 3 bureau mortgage scores at FICO Advanced . Cancel plan after you obtain your scores and reports to avoid re-occurring monthly charge.

[Anonymous]

Noted. 

But still, that does not answer any of my questions as to why the sudden drop.....

[Anonymous]

There is not enough info to answer your question.  Have you pulled your credit report?  You want to look for items like high credit card utilization, late payments, judgements, and collections.  Your score is wholly based on data and you need to pull your report to figure this out.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

To give some context here...

Back in Jan my wife and I started house hunting. Both in our 30's newly married, both employed and saving a bit, figure it's about that time. In Jan I had a FICO of 710, my wife 780+. We applied for a pre-approval, which we got and we were told would not negatively affect our scores at the time. Since then, neither of us have opened a new credit card, or gotten a loan of any sort. We have not run up our CC's and pay them down every month, pretty much. Pretty standard stuff. I have some residual loans out from college and are paying them off, slowly, but still. 

So, we found a house, went to go get a loan and now my FICO is 596?!?!?!?!?! Sorry for the language, but **bleep**?

Went to my bank, they said they could not help. Went to the 3 bureaus and they said, they can only help if there is a clear sign of identity theft. I can not see any alarms there. My wife's FICO is still fine, in the 750 range, possibly due to some debt we carried on our CC for a month or so. (side note: the CC is under her name, not mine). But really, nothing to speak of that would hurt my FICO THAT much. And worse, no one can tell me why this happened. We are probably gonna loose the house now as this is a MASSIVE hurdle. But still, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

So, my question is... What in the wide, wide world of sports in a going on here? I have no new debt, one inquiry, and have paid on time everything that I have out. On top of that, I got a raise, so my debt to income ratio should be better. 

Thoughts here?

Anything helps.

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If you're in the process of house hunting and applying for a mortgage, you need to pull your 3 Bureau report from MyFICO, analyze your mortage scores, and see what needs improvement.

[VintageMel]

Another key reason for checking your report is to make sure that there are no errors, as sometimes happens.

[AllZero]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Noted. 

But still, that does not answer any of my questions as to why the sudden drop.....

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As mentioned up thread, you will need to provide data points.

Pull your reports to see if there are any discrepancies, derogatories, delinquencies, etc.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, everyone. Pulling reports as we speak.

But at first glance, nothing has been added to all 3 reports since January 2020. Nothing was paid late and no discrepancies. I have one inquiry. No collections notices, and no new accounts.

So, based on that, something is amiss here. 

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Who would I have to speak to in order to get a mistake corrected if in fact there is one?

[RadioRob]

OK...  I'm going to step through a couple of things since I'm not fully sure about what's happening with the limited information available in this thread.

1. You said you pulled both of your reports.  You mentioned one score for you and your wife.  Where did you get those scores from?  (The reason we ask is that most sites don't provide the same score used by mortgage issuers.  Even if you have a FICO score, there are over 28 different flavors available.)  There are some scores like Credit Karma that are not real FICO scores...  much less the scores used by FICO for mortgages.  They can be hundreds of points different than the "real thing".  So it's important to make sure you're looking at the same scores used by mortgage lenders.  
2. Swings of over a hundred points don't typically happen from things like a change in utilization, or the ding from having all accounts reporting a zero balance.  If you had a FICO mortage score that dropped 100+ points, my guess is some new collection or charge off started reporting on your credit report.  There are some collection agencies that have old debts they don't report to the bureaus, but still will soft pull your report.  If they see a mortage inquery, they will slap the record on your report knowing you'll be well encouraged to deal with it.  That's why it's important to actually pull your credit report itself and review the data.  Look for accounts reporting as a collections, or charge offs, etc.  If you see negative records, are they accurate?  
3. Banks and the credit bureaus are not going to do anything to help you regarding your score.  They don't know how it's calculated as the exact formulas are not released.  (They're trade secrets...  you only get the output, not the formulas themselves.) The forums here are where people talk about the things that are on credit reports that effect scoring.  So this is a good place to be for help in improving your score.  That starts with you getting a good understanding of what is on your report.  Once you pull them, I would make sure to save each as a PDF and/or print a copy.  That way you can really dive into understanding the data for each account.  
4. After you have your reports pulled, it's helpful for you to provide a list of accounts.... what are the balances, limits, etc.  Are there any negative records on there such as late payments (30/60/90/120/CO, etc) and when did they happen.  

[RadioRob]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you, everyone. Pulling reports as we speak.

But at first glance, nothing has been added to all 3 reports since January 2020. Nothing was paid late and no discrepancies. I have one inquiry. No collections notices, and no new accounts.

So, based on that, something is amiss here. 

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Who would I have to speak to in order to get a mistake corrected if in fact there is one?

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If you've reviewed your reports, and the data itself is all accurate...  meaning you recognize each account, the balances are all accurate, and the payment history is accurate...  there is no one to speak with.  It's your score.  The bank or the bureaus won't be able to assist you.  

But as I noted in my last post, the question is why the difference between what you saw before and what you're seeing now.  The only thing I can think of is that whatever report you saw before for your original score was not your actual FICO mortgage scores.  You would have had 3 different scores for each of you.  Lenders look at the middle score for each of you and use the lower between both applicants.  For example, you might have scores of 700, 720, and 750 and your wife 800, 820, and 840.  In this case, your two middle scores are 720 and 820.  They would use the 720 for determining rates since it's the lower middle score.  

Remember a report contains data for the last seven years.  So when reviewing your reports, it's not just looking at data since Jan 2020.  You want to review the full report going back for the entire record.  If you have literally no late payments, no collections, etc...  it would be suprising to see a score in the 500's.  I would recommend summarizing the report as I noted above with each account.  

Name: 
When Opened: 
Balance:

Limit: 

If there is anything noted about payment history (I know you said there are none, but just for consistancy sake), note it if reported.