Credit Score DROP!?!?!?!

[KLEXH25]

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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. 

1. Where did you get these FICO scores from? From the bank, Credit Karma, Other?

2. What version of score was it? Mortgage score, Fico 8, Other? There are 28 Different scores across all three bureaus.

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

3. Again, where did this FICO score come from? The bank?

4. Again, which FICO score version?

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?

5. Check your credit reports from Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. Are there any new collections that popped up? New accounts you don't recognize? Late payments? Let us know so we can figure out the cause of the score drop.

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. 

6. It will help us to know what current accounts you have on your reports: Credit cards (list balance / limit), Loans (auto, personal, student) with amounts owed vs. original amount, Ages of each account, etc...

Thoughts here?

Anything helps.

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Please see my notes/questions above in blue.

[nmk94]

What's been said by others here is correct. You really need to look at your actual annual reports. Honestly, the BEST thing to do is pay for your 3B report here at myFICO. My wife and I are also in the process of looking for a new home, and so I'm on FICO monitoring (monthly fee), but you should at least get the one time report.

That will give you your mortgage scores, which free services like your credit card won't give you. Plus, if you looked on Credit Karma or something like that, what you saw was a Vantage score, which can be wildly different from your FICO 8, let alone your mortgage FICOs. The 3B will give you your real scores, plus info on what goes into those scores at every level. It's more than worth it when preparing for a major purchase like a home.

And even though the 3B report is as good as pulling your credit reports, I still like to get my reports directly from the bureaus through  annualcreditreport.com. Because of COVID, you can actually get a free report from all three agencies every week. It's great. It'll look like a jumble of data at first but once you get used to it you'll gain a much better understanding of why your score is like it is.

Honestly, with a 596 it makes me think you have some bad stuff on your report like a collection or a card that was charged off. If you don't know about any of those, then you could have been the victim of identity theft.

[SouthJamaica]

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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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For each of the 3 bureaus tell us:

1. What the mortgage score is (EQ FICO 5, TU FICO 4, and EX FICO 2)

2. What public records are shown

3. What collections are shown

4. What open accounts are shown

5. Credit limit and current balance for each open revolving account

6. Whether any closed accounts have a balance

7. What open installment accounts are shown

8. Original loan amount and current balance for each installment account

9. Under each account's payment history whether there are any lates

10. What the negative reason codes are for each mortgage score

Once we have the answers to those questions we'll try to see what's going on with your mortgage scores