@haulingthescoreup wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:I really appreciate all the help...The thing that I really don't get is that all of the scores actually dropped after I sold the house. The "Equifax Complete" explanantion is that the score dropped because I don't have a mortgage. Kind of a "Catch 22". They just made it a little harder to get that mortgage.
The Equifax 3-in-1 scores are FAKO's, and so is their advice.
Your FICO scores might have gone up, down, or stayed the same. They don't consistently relate to changes in FAKO's.
And now that I'm actually awake, let me add that if the mortgage was your only open installment account (mortgage, car loan, etc.), you might have lost some points when you paid it off for reducing your credit mix, as Marinevietvet wrote. Not everyone loses points, but plenty of people do. It depends on a lot of things that vary among us, like age of history and so forth. You're still getting some points for having an installment loan in your history, but there are fewer points for closed loans than for open.
But if you didn't know what your FICO's (as opposed to your FAKO's) were in the first place, you won't know whether and how much they changed if you pull them now, since you won't have any "before" numbers. Don't know if that makes any sense. 
At any rate, if you pull your FICO's, or at least your EQ FICO, check the list of negatives on screen two, which shows what factors are hurting your scores the most. The one on top is the most damaging, the next one is next most damaging, and so forth. If there's anything on there that you can work on, such as high reported revolving credit usage, you can get your scores up before your next mortgage hunt. --hope that helps!
