IF your "extra one" was also auto then yes your math is correct; instead of 30 days for mortgage / auto / student loan inquiry dedupe it's 45 days but you just miss that as well.
4 inquiries on any given bureau is fine, I usually run 3-4 and haven't been denied anything to date though I also haven't gone full out like some folks and haven't taken too many risky bets.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Revelate wrote:IF your "extra one" was also auto then yes your math is correct; instead of 30 days for mortgage / auto / student loan inquiry dedupe it's 45 days but you just miss that as well.
4 inquiries on any given bureau is fine, I usually run 3-4 and haven't been denied anything to date though I also haven't gone full out like some folks and haven't taken too many risky bets.
Hi Revelate. How common is it (do you think) for a credit card issuer to weigh inquiries significantly more heavily than FICO in its decision to approve a new card? For example, two guys, Bob and Fred, both are applying for the same card. Bob has a 782 FICO score on whatever bureau the CCC is using and 2 inquiries. Fred has a 792 score (10 points higher) and 12 inquiries. In all other non-FICO respects Bob and Fred are the same -- same very healthy reported income, etc. Do you have an idea how common it would be for Bob to be approved but Fred rejected? (Even though Fred has a higher score?)
I have never been quite clear on whether or not my FICO score alone is a reliable indicator of whether my inquiry level is too high, or whether I need to watch it separately.
In my case, my scores are pretty high. They seems to oscillate between 790 and 820. (They were higher before I started opening more cards to grab huge signup bonuses.) Mostly they vary between 800 and 810. Can I reliably ignore number of inquiries and just assume that the issuer accepts FICO's valuation of their appropriate weight?
It fluctuates based on the market: back in 2010 inquiries bad, bad consumer! Now, they're pretty irrelevant, and I don't think anyone would quibble with your inquiry count (lenders aren't stupid, most of the time, and this isn't an issue they're dumb on). Anecdotal evidence but with the development timeline and path of both recent FICO and Vantage algorithms (particularly here unless you have a recent boo boo on your file), it appears lenders consider inquiries less than they once did.
FWIW I suspect most of the times inquiries get complained about, they simply didn't want the individual as a customer anyway. FICO is only part of the UW decision, but if you are sporting an 800ish credit score, your credit is effectively pure win from a UW perspective... so it'll be down to income and anything else they deem relevant for their decisioning. In your example case with Bob and Fred, they'd likely either both be approved or both be denied if the lender evaluated them equally on all other fronts, and that applies to probably any lender actually even those using non-traditional qualification.
I wouldn't run out and establish a crapload of accounts / inquiries just because it doesn't seem to matter much now, but don't worry about them either: if you need something, apply with confidence on that front.