Inquiries & effect on mortgage FICO scores

[Anonymous]

I currently am sitting at 687 mid FICO on my mortgage scores, with FICO 8 mid score at 737 and low score of 719. I have been repairing my credit, but opened 3 new credit cards in September of last year (Am Ex, $7000 limit, Pen Fed, $43,000 limit, Costco Citi, $7,000 limit). I have 2 30 day lates on 2 separate cars from September of 2017 due to my wife being in the hospital and completely forgetting about the payments. I have $68,000 in available credit, with only one account reporting with a balance (PenFed @ 7% utilization). One car payment is reporting at $10k remaining of original $22k balance, the other is at $26k of $37k. My student loans are reporting at a balance of $41k of $42k as I entered repayment not long ago.

My average age of accounts is 3 years on the dot. My two big negatives are the lates and the average age, but my total overall on time payments is at 99.7%. However, I currently have 19 inquiries on TU and EQ and 21 on EX. I opened 2 business checking accounts in December and a credit card for my business in January, which resulted in 3 inquiries across all bureaus, and then an inquiry on all of the bureaus for each of those larger cards. I do also have an inquiry for a business line of credit from January. Outside of that, I purchased a truck in January of 18 and showed up with my own financing in place. In order to test drive, I had to fill out a form and the dealership was supposed to verify my income and bank statements, so I had to put down my social. This was the same scenario at another dealership I drove at the next day. While I was out test driving on both of those, the finance department for both dealerships ran my credit for their own financing, resulting in the remaining 15 dings on each credit bureau. I still used my own financing because it was superior.

My question is 3 pronged- how much are these additional inquiries damaging my credit at this point, and how do I go about getting these removed? Also, what are the fixes at this point to help improve my credit?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My question is 3 pronged- how much are these additional inquiries damaging my credit at this point, and how do I go about getting these removed? Also, what are the fixes at this point to help improve my credit?

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Since you didn't explicitly tell them not to run credit there's probably a disclosure on what you signed permitting them to pull credit you're not likely to get them removed.

The INQ's from a scoring perspective within a 2 week period get scored as a single INQ which isn't much when it comes to points.

Fixes.... clean up the lates w/ the lenders through GW letters and groveling.  Plea your case with them about wanting to get a mortgage approval and the on time payments since then.  If it comes down to it then bring in the medical circumstances for the sympathy factor to get them removed.  Getting rid of the lates will give you a boost over 700 at least and every little point counts on a mortgage app.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I appreciate the response. On both dealership pulls, I was explicit with them that I had my lending in place and did not want credit pulls. They both said it wasn't conveyed by the sales person to the finance department. Not sure if that helps or not.

[Anonymous]

Depends on the paper you signed.  I simply avoid it by not giving them info or in the least not giving them a DOB/SSN to run credit with.  Hind sight being you could have simply locked your reports before heading to the dealer as well.  

Another method to avoid the confusion is to write it on whatever paper they want you to fill out DO NOT PULL CREDIT and don't sign it.  W/O written authorization they would have to NOT pull the CR info or be fined for doing so.

The last time I dealt with a dealer was on  my current car that just I just paid off last month.  I only allowed them to pull for dealer/OEM financing through Audi FS which worked out fine w/ 2.9% and first mo's payment paid by them.  It did result in a 2nd pull from VW credit which manages the Audi payments so, not a big deal.  

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I currently am sitting at 687 mid FICO on my mortgage scores, with FICO 8 mid score at 737 and low score of 719. I have been repairing my credit, but opened 3 new credit cards in September of last year (Am Ex, $7000 limit, Pen Fed, $43,000 limit, Costco Citi, $7,000 limit). I have 2 30 day lates on 2 separate cars from September of 2017 due to my wife being in the hospital and completely forgetting about the payments. I have $68,000 in available credit, with only one account reporting with a balance (PenFed @ 7% utilization). One car payment is reporting at $10k remaining of original $22k balance, the other is at $26k of $37k. My student loans are reporting at a balance of $41k of $42k as I entered repayment not long ago.

My average age of accounts is 3 years on the dot. My two big negatives are the lates and the average age, but my total overall on time payments is at 99.7%. However, I currently have 19 inquiries on TU and EQ and 21 on EX. I opened 2 business checking accounts in December and a credit card for my business in January, which resulted in 3 inquiries across all bureaus, and then an inquiry on all of the bureaus for each of those larger cards. I do also have an inquiry for a business line of credit from January. Outside of that, I purchased a truck in January of 18 and showed up with my own financing in place. In order to test drive, I had to fill out a form and the dealership was supposed to verify my income and bank statements, so I had to put down my social. This was the same scenario at another dealership I drove at the next day. While I was out test driving on both of those, the finance department for both dealerships ran my credit for their own financing, resulting in the remaining 15 dings on each credit bureau. I still used my own financing because it was superior.

My question is 3 pronged- how much are these additional inquiries damaging my credit at this point, and how do I go about getting these removed? Also, what are the fixes at this point to help improve my credit?

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1. Inquiries and new accounts are big factors in mortgage scores, so no doubt they're hurting plenty.

2. You can't get them removed; you need to let them age off. Once they're a year old they stop counting in your scores.

3. You can improve your credit by (a) not applying for any new credit, (b) paying down your loans but not to zero, (c) trying various means to get some of the negatives removed from your reports.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, the information above is not complete. FICO 98 has a 14 day deduplication window and FICO 04 and 08 have a 45 day deduplication window. They all have a 30 day buffer on installment loans:

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/When-does-score-drop-after-an-inquiry/m-...

[Anonymous]

By the way, just to put it out there. I freeze my reports before I go to a car dealership, that way that cannot happen. When I need them to pull my report, we choose which bureau and I unlock or unfreeze only that one bureau, that way I only lose points at one Bureau versus multiple bureaus. Even though inquiries may be deduplicated, there’s no reason to lose at every bureau.

True enough they do not like it, they want to pull all three so they can find your highest and then have lenders play shoot the barrel with them.

I do not allow this. I pay good money for my scores and I already know my scores. I will tell you which one is highest and that is where we will go unless I have a reason to choose another bureau, such as too many inquiries or whatever.