Looking for advice...Credit card utilization in advance of refinance and 2nd home purchase

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Ok, I am a newbie to this and was hoping for some advice.  I am preparing to refinance my home in the next month or twoand potentially even buy a second home as an investment in a few months.  My current mortgage scores are 704 (TU), 708 (EXP) and 720 (EFX).  I was hoping to try and get my middle score up to at least 720 before I refi.  I paid one of my credit cards down to a zero balance, it had $3193 on it with a line of credit of $13,500 and my credit score didn't move a point.

Below is a summary of where my accounts currently stand:

WF: $0 Balance, $13,500 Credit Limit

Cap One: Reporting a $842 Balance,  $10,500 Credit Limit

Chase: Reporting a $7222 Balance, $20,700 Credit Limit

Discover: Reporting a $0 Balance, $13,900 Credit Limit

Again, I thought I would get some movement on the WF paying it off from a $3193 balance but nothing.  If anyone can give me any advice on what are the optimization % breaks for Chase and Cap One I would appreciate it.  The Chase monthly payment is due on the 3rd so appreciate any advice in the near term.  I have the money to pay down the Chase but could use it for other things so I'll be pretty frustrated if I dump $5 to $7K and it doesn't move a dime.  

Also, should I pay off Cap One (it's due on the 8th)? 

For the Discover card, I am an authorized user for my mom's account and I've been on it for about 5 years.  When they calculate total utilization is it taking into account the Discover card?

I have a few late payments that are affecting my score some with the most recent being 19 months ago.  All of the others are 3 years plus.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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Mortgage scores don't move that quickly, and I do not think  you will be able to accomplish much with them.

You might pick up a few points by getting your Chase card down below $6k and paying your Cap One down to zero.

You would of course pick up points by getting rid of some negatives, but that takes more time than you seem to feel you have.

[Anonymous]

So my WF account updated last week on the 25th/26th.  So the good news is I used that creditchecktotal.com you pointed me towards and my middle score with Experian is now up to 713.  I hadn't checked it since early January.  I'm now only 7 points away.  I'm hoping with the pay down of the Chase card which should update next week on the 8th or 9th and the Cap1 (usually updates around the 15th) to zero that it will give me those 7 points but we shall see.  Fingers crossed.

[Anonymous]

When you say the account updated, do you mean the new balance was reported to the bureaus?

Any time a balance change is made to any account, the potential score changing-impact cannot be realized until that account gets reported and the change lands on your CR.

Very often someone will make a large payment on say the 1st of the month, but the account doesn't report to the bureaus until the 25th for example.  They pull their report/scores in the 15th, but that paydown from the 1st in this example won't have any scoring impact for another 10 days.