@donkort wrote:Yes, I have. I was told by the receptionist at the Municipal Credit Union that a 720 FICO is required, which scared me. However, subsequently, upon reflection, I began to suspect that the 720 would be required to obtain the best interest rate, rather than a requirement to obtain the loan itself. My scores are 673 TU, 684 EQ (per MyFICO) and 693 EX ("PLUS" score). My credit card utilization is way, way high. I have a $50, paid medical collection on TU,; 2 6-year-old 30-day lates, and one 6-year-old 60-day late on all 3 bureaus.
I'm a member of the Municipal Credit Union. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, I could speak to a loan specialist.
Hi donkort,
What happens in a couple of weeks? Will something change your scores?
Remember, PLUS scores have no correlation with FICO scores. DH's EXP PLUS score is very high, his FICO is much lower. It's confusing to post PLUS scores, much better to accurately post that your EXP score is unknown. (I've noticed that this is particularly confusing to new members with less experience than you, donkort - so you may understand the lack of correlation between the two scores but others may falsely assume there is some sort of relationship)
Have you thought about CU shopping? We actually hopped to a new CU for our car loan because their rates and services were far better than our "old" CU.
And lastly, since you're pulling your credit reports, have you considered walking in with copies and having a loan officer go over them with you. They may be able to give you some good feedback without pulling. Of course, they'll pull when you're ready to app. We've found that what we think someone is looking for; or their response to our CR, may be very different than real world stuff. Usually real world has been surprisingly better than we anticipated.
And second lastly 
, find out who they do pull. In our experience, they're usually pretty upfront. Our "old" CU did not pull FICO - go figure! They wouldn't tell us what they were pulling and wouldn't give us a copy of that report, but the scores were quite a bit off of what we knew our FICO's to be.
Best wishes on your journey and keep us posted!
