Sadly the simulator is not very accurate on some things so I'd caution on relying on it for anything actually.
Generally what is good in FICO 8 is either good or neutral in the mortgage scores, but they are different.
What I would suggest is posting your tradeline details, revolvers with current balance and limit, and we can give you advice as to how to strategically optimize that portion of your file for your mortgage app. Might make some difference, but unless your revolving utilization is ugly (FICO wise) I'd temper my expectations honestly.
Then again cleaning up my own file took me from a 710 mid-score to a 720+ mid-score from an underwriting perspective, and that's huge win, was either .25 or .50 on my rate, and that's a big deal.
@Anonymous wrote:
Revelate, thanks very much for the thoughtful answer. My utilization is not great from a FICO prospective, so I’m betting that paying it down will help on the FICO 4 front.
Here are my details:
Cap One Card: 3000 limit/ 1900 balance
Chase Slate: 2500 limit/ 2300 balance
CareCredit (synchrony: 800 limit/ 100 balance
I’ve got a car loan that’s about 1/3 paid down with current balance of 12k.
Is this helpful? I gotta believe throwing 2-3k at the card balances can only help?
Oh absolutely actually, that's not horribly ugly from a FICO perspective but it's nowhere close to pretty so there is hope! Actually with FICO 8 that simulator response might not be that far off using that 3K smartly.
That Chase Slate at 92% utilization is absolutely a ding and might be 10 points right there; all 3 balances is also likely a ding too, and even the Cap 1 might be depending on your scorecard.
Pay off the Slate and the Care Credit and the rest towards the C1 if we're talking 3K: I don't know how much you will get on the mortgage scores but you will get something and that's worth doing if we're talking mortgage app if you aren't above 740 (or 760 if you need PMI) already.
Edit: Ah heck you're currently at 68% aggregate too, that's also no bueno haha. Paying off 3K would bring you down to 20.6%, which isn't optimal, but I'm willing to bet there's at least one breakpoint in between there and where you are now, maybe two even and that would be non-trivial.
Certainly let us know the results afterwards 
.
@Anonymous wrote:
Again, thanks. So I thought the optimal thing (for FICO scoring) was to have all revolving accounts at about 33% utilization? Is it really
More like 10%?
Also, is it total utilization (across all cards), or isnit optimal to have each card below a magic %?
If my score goes up 30 points, it will put my mid FICO 8 at 720. Here’s hoping the mortgage score follows. We have more than 20% equity, so PMI is not an issue; we just want the best rates we can get. 😊
Individual tradelines are somewhere around 33% but might be 9% too, but I know from personal testing that there's a line for aggregate revolving utilization at 9% on EQ FICO 5 explicitly which is one of the mortgage trifecta. FICO 8 too I believe actually.
Multiple components: individual utilization, aggregate utilization, and number of accounts with balances when talking revolving tradelines, though modern analysis suggests FICO 04 and earlier conflate installment loans in that number of accounts bit which means that applies to all mortgage scores.
So paying off 2/3 of your credit cards, which sounds like leaves you with 2/4 accounts is a win on the third part too in addition to the two revolving utilization explicit metrics.
Out of curiosity what if anything is also depressing your score? Age or some negative information? I cleared 720 on the mortgage mid-score with a tax lien and collection and some lates at least.
Well all accounts open / closed do count for age purposes for FICO.
Unless your credit history is horribly short I think you'll be fine if you bring that revolving utilization down. I'd pay down the 3K and then see where I was at before doing anything else, but if you're basically clean now on two bureaus that should be sitting nicely, and can do somewhat better even bringing that aggregate down under 9% too.
Basically if you can pay that remaining tradeline down to what, $260 or so that's totally optimal which is another what $1040 if you can swing it. Also given that you're going not be using Experian for anything, you can safely ignore the installment loan too.
When were you planning to pull the trigger on the mortgage?
@Anonymous wrote:
Hello- I’m getting ready to refinance my mortgage. I purchased the MyFICO 3B report that shows all the various scores. The available simulator tells me that if I pay down my credit cards by $2k, my FICO 8 will go up 35 points. That’s great, but it’s the FICO 5, 4 or 2 that mortgage lenders use. Will those scores also go up by 35 points?
Thanks in advance for anyone who knows.
1. The simulator, which purports to predict your FICO 8, is worthless.
2. Your FICO 8 does not correlate to your FICO 5, 4, and 2. The mortgage scores behave very differently than FICO 8, and even behave differently than each other.
3. The best things you can do in the short run to boost your mortgage scores are (a) make no new applications for credit, (b) have all but one of your revolving accounts report a zero balance, and (c) have one revolving account report a small balance, which you then pay off after it reports. Use the Chase account as one of your zero balance accounts, not as the one reporting a balance, because when you pay off the Chase balance it will re-report as zero.
