Increasing Mortgage Score

[Anonymous]

What is the best and most effective way to increase my mortgage score over the next 6-12 months?  Or should I just keep doing what I am doing - paying all my bills on time and paying as much as I can as fast as I can.  I have 4 credit cards with the balance about 6k - 54% utilization.  Student loans in deferement of about 13K. I monitor my FICO now I am about 650 across the board on all 3 bureaus. 

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Shannon,

Ive been doing a lot of reading about increasing mortgage scores also. It seems that it increasess very similarly to other scores; for instance paying your 54% util down would give you a big score increase and would correspond to an increase in mortgage scores also.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What is the best and most effective way to increase my mortgage score over the next 6-12 months?  Or should I just keep doing what I am doing - paying all my bills on time and paying as much as I can as fast as I can.  I have 4 credit cards with the balance about 6k - 54% utilization.  Student loans in deferement of about 13K. I monitor my FICO now I am about 650 across the board on all 3 bureaus. 

Thanks!

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Reducing aggregate utilization on the credit cards and reducing # cards reporting a balance typically should significantly improve Fico scores - particularly the Fico mortgage scores. Don't allow balances to report on more than 2 cards (one card only may be optimal but not absolutely critical). What is critical is reducing aggregate utilization to under 30% as a starting point and then to under 20%. Ideally lower aggregate utilization to 9% or less and maintain it in that range.

Not sure about best option for deferred student loans relative to scoring.