INQ impact on MTG score - DP

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to thank this community for all the knowledge found in these posts - I have been reading daily and have become obsessed with understanding credit scoring and improving my scores.  I wanted to post below some hopefully helpful information.

I have multiple lates 30, 60, 90, 120 but no collections or chargoffs.  The lates are all from Dec 2019 through March 2020.

Onto some data - I made the mistake in February of thinking my mortgage scores were good enough for a refinance as I was only looking at EX 2, which was 684.  I had the lender pull credit and it turns out EQ was 652 and TU 625.

In March I paid down some balances and went from 55% aggregate utilization to 33%.  This included one card going from maxed to 51%.  I signed up for myFico and pulled my scores on 3/22:

EX 2 - 687

EQ 5 - 674

TU 4 - 668

Just missed the 680 by 6 points in March.  Lesson learned - although it would have been a stretch financially, I should have gone under 28% aggregate utilization and gone under 48% on the individual card and I think I could have boosted the 6 points.

April 

For whatever reason, I thought pulling my scores again on 4/6 would be a good idea (hoping for some luck to be honest).  Not much had changed except the inquiry from the mortgage pull had hit:

EX 2 - 687

EQ 5 - 659

TU 4 - 661

EQ 5 dropped 15 points going from 1 inquiry to 2 in the last 12 months.

May - I paid a little bit more down but nothing major.  AU card went from ~30% to 20% and the previously maxed card went from 51% to 45%.  Aggregate utilization now at 27%

EX 2 - 689

EQ 5 - 661

TU 4 - 665

The plan for June is to follow my lender's plan and pay everything down to 17% aggregate utilization.  I have been trying to figure out how they came up with this number but I cannot and will just have to assume their simulator is more accurate than myFico or Experian!  From reading here, I will try my best to get under 9%. 

I will post back to hopefully help someone else on a similiar path.

[babygirl1256]

Glad to see that I'm not the only one that have been reading the forum posts daily and literally have become obsessed with understanding credit scoring and improving my scores also!!! Wishing you success in paying everything down to 17% aggregate utilization. 

[House2021]

Thank you so much for sharing! This is helpful and makes me hopeful, I need 11 points on one of my mid scores that's in this range, seeing movement with yours with small changes is great.

Babygirl1256 I'm the same way!,

[tooleman694]

Getting over 680 was the hardest thing for me to do. Those mortgage scores are mean.

In your file, I am thinking when all of your lates get 2 years old you should see some bigger gains.

[Anonymous]

Small update for June so far:

My EQ 8 went up 10 points to 731 for seemingly no reason, TU 8 went up 4 and EX 8 went up 2...The big paydowns did not hit yet so for EQ at least I am thinking my AAoA went to 7y 1m?

In terms of the Mortgage scores, I am not going to bother pulling until the paydowns have hit. 

@tooleman694 

But to the above comment, I do think I have a max mortgage score of I am guessing 699 as the lates are just over a year old, maybe a little over 700 if I was at 1% utilization.  FICO 8 simulations seems to be topping out at 750-760 which would mean around a 100 point penalty for Mortgage FICO and FICO 8 due to the late payments, ouch.  I do have a decent amount of inquiries and new accounts in the last year so that could also be dragging a bit.   

[Anonymous]

EQ 8 and EX 8 have both gone from 720->731 so far this month.  TU 8 up 4 points.

For the EX 8, the only real change was "time since last missed payment" aged from 17m -> 18m; so maybe there is a threshold there because the reason code has also dropped "recent missed payment".  Monitoring on Experian site.

EQ 8 is under the impression that the missed payment aged 14m -> 15m so I do not think that caused the 11 point gain.  I will know more when I pull the 3b reports later this week.

All relevant balances update this week so I will report back on mortgage score hopeful improvement.

[Anonymous]

June Update - advice needed to get EQ Mtg to 680!

CB  F8  Mtg  Recent Inq

EX  741  696  4

EQ  745  672  2

TU  727  666  4

CC  Bal  Limit  UT%

1(AU)  1406  10500  13.39%

2           5339   25000  21.36%

3 (closed)  1228   18200  6.75%

Agg UT%  14.85%

I have 3 options (AZEO not really possible):

1 - have lender repull credit and have them run simulator - don't really want to do this as it seems the previous inquiry cost me 15 points on EQ, which I could use back right now, lol

2 - Pay off the 3 card.  This card was closed due to lates (not charged off) and I have been keeping a balance as it helps my aggregate utilization because of the high limit.  Since I have paid the 2 card down the loss of the extra limit would be lessened.  Doing so would give me a zero balance card but increase my aggregate utilization from 15% to 20%.  Not sure this would even give me 8 points on EQ

3 - Not really an option but, on EQ I have 4 inquiries in the last 12 months.  3 are from last summer for a mortgage (7/7/2020, 7/18/2020, 8/10/2020) and one from 2/22/2021.  I am assuming the 3 from last summer are combined as 1 and this is why EQ reports 2 recent inquiries.  My guess is that I would have to wait until after 8/10/2021 for the "1 inquiry" to fall off and I would be back to 1 recent inquiry on EQ.  If they dinged me 15 points going from 1->2 then they should give me 15 back going from 2->1, lol.

Any feedback / advice is appreciated in advance.