Mortgage Score Help

[nwa479]

One thing you could try first is to see the impact of lowering your utilization from 60% down to at least 49 percent.  Better if you could hit 29 percent, best if below 9 percent.   The utilization is a high percentage of your score so this could help get you from 608 to 620.  I gain about 30 points on fico8 from reducing my utilization from 55 percent last year to 1 percent now.   I'm not sure with the two cards what your results will be.  

Do you have details on the derogs you could share?  How old? Lates or collections?   How late?  Date of first delinquency?  With the help of others on the forum you may be able to achieve some improvements but this alone may not be enough for any significant increases.  As previously noted here, just disputing otherwise valid derogs could make the situation worse.  

[tnhomestead]

If you can pay off your charge offs and other derogatories, that should stop them from continuing to report and lowering your score. If some will do pfd and remove them completely from your credit score that should help. Also maybe a good will campaign to remove paid baddies? Always worth a try!

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

i paid off collection account 100% and even as it remained on file, it said balance zero and it increased my score like 50 points. later on it was fully removed from file and the score increase was big but not so much as paying the balance.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

i paid off collection account 100% and even as it remained on file, it said balance zero and it increased my score like 50 points. later on it was fully removed from file and the score increase was big but not so much as paying the balance.

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@Anonymous this is the first reported score increase for paying a collection without removal that I have ever read.

I would love to have more details, screenshots, and profile information. Is it possible something else was going on at the time? because this goes against all data points we have. 

would be grateful for any and all data. 

[Anonymous]

will see how i can give more info...

In fact, it happened with 2 accounts, one about 400 and one about 450.

Both issuses started with tiny balances that grew big with fines and finace charges and i tried to fight but no avail. So I paid one off, and i saw the results I paid the other. After some months both were gone from records.

[Anonymous]

what i would tell people immediately, if the balance is not big, or you can afford to pay it off in any way, try to do so before you stress the process of removing total from credit file. If the score shots up, great, if not, you fight on with nothing to lose.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So is it best to just leave derogatories alone and not dispute them? For some reason, they keep reporting and killing my utilization ratio and past due balances among other things.

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@Anonymous The reason is because they are unpaid and they would like to get paid. If you pay them, you will get a score increase from the Amounts owed on delinquent accounts Metric and lowered utilization. Plus it will no longer suppress your score and will allow it to recover. 

you should not dispute a valid debt. If for some reason it is invalid, such as a debt that's not yours or if the date/amount were wrong, then a dispute would be appropriate.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

what i would tell people immediately, if the balance is not big, or you can afford to pay it off in any way, try to do so before you stress the process of removing total from credit file. If the score shots up, great, if not, you fight on with nothing to lose.

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@Anonymous The problem is they would have a lot to lose. They would have the only bargaining leverage that they had gone.

When they have the debt, they have leverage to bargain for a PFD if it's a collection or a recall from collections if it is the OC, or potentially some sort of negotiation with the OC. once it's paid they have no leverage whatsoever.

with that said I would recommend just the opposite. Try to get a PFD try to work it out and if you can't get it removed and you have no other choice, then pay it because paid does look better than unpaid. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

will see how i can give more info...

In fact, it happened with 2 accounts, one about 400 and one about 450.

Both issuses started with tiny balances that grew big with fines and finace charges and i tried to fight but no avail. So I paid one off, and i saw the results I paid the other. After some months both were gone from records.

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@Anonymous are you sure you're not talking about a charge off instead of a collection?

[Anonymous]

in both cases i talked alot with the collection agencies, so of course it was collection.