@radioactivedk wrote:Call me crazy, but I have paid for and subscribe to every service except for Exp. The scores for Experian and Transunion on MyFICO are a full 50+ points higher than what 3 different mortgage lenders are telling me. This has been the case for about 2 months and several pulls and 1 rapid rescore. Equifax is consistently the low score, but then again I had to fight them for 20+ years to keep my mom & dad off my report (I am a "Jr" and, no, we've never shared accounts or SSNs).
That being said, when I purchase my FICO from the Equifax site, it matches what the mortgage lenders are reporting consistently. It also hits within 10 points of auto dealerships. Personally I don't see myself spending more money on myFICO. Maybe if I'm looking for something simple like a credit card, but I wouldn't ever rely on the scores on this site for mortgage and auto.
Classic used by mortgage companies? WHAT mortgage companies? I haven't found one yet that used the scores on myFICO sold to consumers.
The EQ '04 formerly found here was used by virtually every mortgage application here in the United States: the FICO at Equifax and the one here matched identically; however, that's no longer the case.
FWIW I agree with the assessment that if a lender isn't using it, it's not really worth tracking: I never pull my TU here because I simply don't care about my '98 scores, and I'll get my EQ '04 (Beacon 5.0) elsewhere now, but I wish instead of going to the updated scores, myFICO had simply switched to the scores used by mortgage lenders: would've been utterly fantastic to get that all in one place but between the CRA's and likely their customers, that just doesn't appear to be in the cards.
@radioactivedk wrote:I agree. It would be easier if the version number was reported on these consumer score sites. Heck, I had one builder pull what on the paper said "Beacon 1" a month ago (in house builder finance, pre-qual only eq). It was actually the highest one I've seen so it must have been ancient! I wish that was the builder we actually wanted to go with...very generous old scoring model. We could've got a great rate on a house that would fall apart in 5 years, lol.
For the time being, I just keep an eye on what the big auto/mortgage and major banks pull and keep paying the monthly fee for multiple monitoring services. I'm just telling myself that paying multiple sources for 6 months or so is better than being surprised and paying a ton in fraud or a ton in extra interest costs in the long run. Once the house is built and closing done, then we can close all but one subscription just to monitor for fraud alerts.
I'm not certain on your rationale given the variation in scores: monitoring from a bunch of different places doesn't seem like a good financial decision to me personally but if the money is irrelevant, then no worries.
If it's a conventional mortgage, your scores are pretty much fixed as the GSE's dictated it; individual builders or jumbo lending or people bundling off to the secondary/tertiary market, could be different... but it's unlikely as the industry likes the fixed standard for a whole lot of reasons. That's why the EQ model here was the gold standard, now to my knowledge the only conventional mortgage scores are available from Equifax Scorepower, DCU's monthly score, and if you happen to be lucky enough to live in PA and can join PSECU which I believe is still v2 for their EX score they provide their members.
That said, the important thing is the report data itself; end of the day if you have a clean, thick, and diverse report, you'll likely score just fine on any model chosen. That's really what I'm personally aiming for from a credit perspective - the mortgage when I can financially afford one will take care of itself score-wise assuming I don't do anything stupid (or at least anything that can't be easily fixed, like the Fresh Start paperwork I still am dawdling filing) between now and then, and not doing anything too awkward like not keeping an installment loan around, and financing another car within the next 11ish years but unfortunately auto-enhanced scores aren't available period to end consumers.
ETA: thanks for prodding my thinking on this one; may make sense to just go see if I can refinance my auto loan down immediately since I'm living on assets a while, APR's are absurdly low, and I paid it down way early thinking that I needed to clear it for a mortgage DTI calculation... now that the mortgage idea is dead for years, might be beneficial to change things up sooner rather than later.
Thanks for the input. When the different services were in the $10-15/month range, paying for 3 wasn't too bad. But I see your point about maybe throwing money down the drain since some (I'm looking at EX!!!) costs as much as $29/month. I was lucky to be grandfathered into a cheap $10/month full service 3-in-1 with TU's product, but their Vantage scores are the most useless around. I might keep them for the fraud monitoring and alerts and just pay for the FICOs elsewhere as needed.
I'm actually surprisingly having to rebuild my credit after a simple move from California to Texas taught me the realities of income difference in those two states for the same job 
I had California sized debts (larger) on a Texas salary (definitely smaller!) The dumbest thing I did in 2005 was pay off a bunch of credit cards then CLOSE the accounts. Years later and I discovered I was being sub-primed for everything and didn't know why. It's because I effectively shut down 20 years of credit history and had to start over with new accounts..in 2008 at the peak of the crisis.
If only I had a time machine, I'd have paid them down instead of completely off and just left them open with lower balances. Oh well, live and learn.
@rpb0528 wrote:My Score Watch recently updated my FICO scores to reflect the latest scoring version. I am in the process of purchasing a home and the lenders I have contacted are using the older FICO04 version for scoring. Now I no longer have an accurate way of seeing what the lender will see when my credit score is pulled. Is there any way to see my FICO04 score? If not, I will have to rethink my paying for this service any longer. It has just become as unhelpful as the other sites offering a consumer credit score.
you can buy EQ04 directly from equifax site, i think if you are a member of DCU you also get eq04 version. Other than that i am not sure theres an way from SW anymore ?
