Help analyzing my low auto scores

[jl4]

Wasn’t sure if I should post this in the Auto Loans forum or here since it’s about an auto loan, but related to scoring.

I have a 30-day late from September 2017 thanks to my loving XW, the only late since 2013 (30-60-30). I’ve also had three other car loans in the last 10 years, none of which ever saw a late. My auto scores are in the crapper (EQ Auto 5: 578, TU Auto 4: 643, EX Auto 2: 640). EQ blames CFA, new account, late, and short account history in that order). TU blames short history, new accounts, missed payments, loan balances. EX blames short history, seeking credit, missed payments, accounts with balances. My regular scores are current below.

I’m looking for financing (or maybe lease if the deal is right—I never get super attached to cars) in December as a Christmas present to myself but have a couple questions:

1. By knocking out my CFA (im assuming it’s my Affirm loan—0% over 12 months) and gardening until then, should I see reasonable improvements on the turd of a score?

2. Once my auto-loan specific late is > 1year, how would that effect scoring?

Bonus: it seems like I could benefit from applying for a loan from a CU. Mine uses TU FICO 8 (normal) and that is my highest score... agree/disagree?

Anything else I should consider? Any details I missed that would help?

Additional note: I have an auto loan now that’ll see it’s payoff in a couple weeks, in time for reporting in September.

[Anonymous]

There is mixed opinion on whether paying in full a CFA in good standing will remove the penalty assciated with having a CFA.  One person believes he saw substantial score improvement after that (as if the entire penalty disappeared).  Other people believe that the penalty is softened but not removed.  Others that the full penalty remains until the CFA falls off the report.  All have grounds for believing they are right.

Supposing you pay the CFA in full and you make the final payment on your open auto loan -- will you have no more open installment accounts?

What is your current TU FICO 8 score?

Can you describe the full extent of your derogs and their dates?  It sounds like you have other derogs besides the Day 30 auto late from your ex.

It looks like you have many cards.  Are they all reporting zero except one (AZEO) with the remaining card reporting a small balance?

[jl4]

I will have some. Student loans, lending club, and the auto loan with the late—all will be around for s few more years at least. I have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting my XW to manage her finances well enough and making enough money to convince a lender to refi me off it.

Digging some more, Affirm isn’t even reporting to Equifax. I have a closed CFA via Regional Finance, though, PIF and clean. Could Lending Club be considered a CFA? I’d bet money Regional Finance is.
 
My TU FICO 8 is 723 (all three FICO 8s are below).

Besides the 9/17 30-day on the auto loan, I have a 30-60-30 from Mid-2013 on an Amazon store card. I think around August. That event resulted in the account closure by the lender and is PIF.
 
My utilization is around 12%. I have a card in the 40%s, a couple in the 20s, and a couple in the 10s or lower. The rest are zero. A few more will report as zero so my next report batch on the 15th should see improvement, there.

[Anonymous]

Implementing AZEO is certainly a good choice.  That will give you a baseline of what your scores can be without other improvements to your profile.  Also of great importance is getting all cards paid to under 29% of their individual limit.  Would it be financially doable to pay off all CC debt (with one card still reporting a small balance)?

You mention gardening for (I think) a year.  That would be a great idea since it sounds like you have a low AAoA and many new accounts.  Can your hoped for auto purchase really wait that long?

You ask whether you would benefit from taking out another loan.  No.  Certainly not.  You already have many open loans.  Any available cash should be spent paying down CC debt and then paying down loans but not paying them off.  (The exception might be PIFing the CFAs.)

If you could get the Day 30-60-90 late removed that would be very much in your favor.  People here have strategies for that.  And it would also be great seeing if the Day 30 Auto loan that is recent could be removed.

[Revelate]

CFA's I suspect age just like any other derogatory when we're talking FICO 8 and below.

Doesn't matter if paid or not, I paid off my CFA fully successfully July 2012 so over six years ago now, and EQ and EX still both complain about it.  Absurd when a Federal Tax Lien is more consumer friendly than a CFA.  Actually it may be more damaging than I thought on FICO 04 and FICO 98 variants as my TU FICO 4 is still supiciously high in comparison to EQ FICO 5.  EQ has an old CFA, TU has a recent 60D.  Hrm.

Oh look at that, stuck with it for exactly four more years =/.

And yes, LC unfortunately has been marked as a CFA by some prior reports we've had here.

If you have reason codes for your Auto scores might help to share; that said, one usually gets a better deal from CU's unless you're really pretty credit wise and as such not sure dealer financing and therefore Auto Enhanced FICO scores really matter much for the credit / financing savvy individuals.

[jl4]

Here are my scores and the reason codes behind them as of 7/15, in order:

EQ Auto 5: 578

- CFA

- new accounts

- late payments

- short account history

TU Auto 4: 643

- short history

- new accounts

- missed payments

- loan balances

EX Auto 2: 640

- short history

- seeking credit

- missed payments

- accounts with balances.

The Lending Club loan isn't going anywhere anytime soon (I have 32 payments left, 31 after August 15) so I'm not going to fuss over it too much. Coming over my accounts (I like to use Credit Karma for this since it has a pretty good heads up view of all accounts), I have 11/16 cards with balances right now. Some will get zeroed out in the next couple months. I imagine I'll still have 3-4 of them with balances come December. Since my student loans are all broken up and not one large loan, I can't help but wonder if that plays a part in the scoring (for EX auto 2 anyway).

Unless something dramatically changes between now and December, I'll likely be hitting up my local CU (BECU) for a car loan, knowing they pull the vanilla TU FICO 8, my best score. Really curious to see what happens when the late payment from the auto loan becomes more than 1 year old. I saw a graphc floating around here at some point in the past that implied the weight of lates drops dramatically after a year, but I can't find it at the moment. 

[jl4]

Adding one more score set to the list, beucase I totally spaced on this earlier:

Fico 8 Auto for...

Equifax: 646

• You have one or more accounts showing missed payments or derogatory indicators.
• You have a short credit history.
• You recently missed a payment or had a derogatory indicator reported on your credit report.
• You have a consumer finance account on your credit report.

Transunion: 701

• You have one or more accounts showing missed payments or derogatory indicators.
• You recently missed a payment or had a derogatory indicator reported on your credit report.
• You have a consumer finance account on your credit report.
• You have a short credit history.

Experian: 629

• You have one or more accounts showing missed payments or derogatory indicators.
• You recently missed a payment or had a derogatory indicator reported on your credit report.
• You've recently been looking for credit.
• You have a consumer finance account on your credit report.

[Revelate]

I have, sadly, some personal experience with recent lates.

The impact starts dropping even sooner than a year when we're talking FICO 8; also, don't even worry about your older generation Auto Enhanced scores like at all, they never caught on and the auto makers switched to FICO 8 AU with a quickness from my experience, most were using it in 2011-2012 even.

• You recently missed a payment or had a derogatory indicator reported on your credit report.

That reason code fades somewhere in the 1-3 year mark for 30D anyway, and maybe for all deliquencies and that's presumably a score boost.  Not sure if that's at a year or sometime later, I couldn't really figure that out from my old reports and waiting to see on my new ones when they disappear for me.

[jl4]

That makes sense. I’ll find out in a couple months then if it has any impact at the 1 year mark 🙈. A local delete even publishes their rates an Equifax 646 is not placing me in a good spot: https://www.hondaofseattle.com/rates.html