For optimal reporting you would want a balance of ~ $10-$20 on one of your bankcards, with the others reporting $0. Amex Delta, BoA, and OpenSky should all work as the balance-carrying card. Your Vantage West CU card should as well, but some credit union cards don't get coded correctly, so it's prly better to report the small balance on one of the others if you don't have time to experiment. Also, regarding your new Cap1 card, be aware that the new account could have an effect on your mortgage process, both with regards to the potential scoring impacts when it reports and the concern it may cause your underwriter with regards to credit seeking.
The usual advice is not to apply for any new credit until you have your keys in hand, but if your credit isn't pulled again between now and then you should be fine. The thing you would need to experiment with on your Vantage West card is not whether they report your balances but whether they code their cards correctly as bankcards for reporting. Really the only way to do that is to try AZEO w/ one of your other bankcards one month and then do AZEO with the CU card the next and see whether you lose points or not.
@Anonymous wrote:Calling all the experts. Need to make sure my score doesn't drop since I'm in the middle of buying a house and can't let this hurt my credit. Just got two secured cards graduate to unsecured and one of them increased my limit from $500 to $10,000.
So I'm torn and confused as to how much balance i should carry and on which card, these are the ones I have :
Amex Delta Reserve CL $3,700
Vantage west credit union CL 10,000
BofA MasterCard - $500
Open Sky -$200
also just got a capital one quicksilver for $300 two weeks ago but not sure when it will report since first payment is due in July.
1. It was a mistake to get the Capital One card while in the process of getting a mortgage but there's nothing you can do about that now.
2. To optimize your revolving credit for your mortgage scores and DTI, you should have all but one of the cards report a zero balance while the one reporting card -- preferably the Amex -- reports a small balance before you pay it off. Vantage West reports the balance from the 5th of the month, Amex and Bank of America report the statement balance. I'm not familiar with Open Sky.
