Question on Experian scoring

[Anonymous]

So I have a question as to why my score dropped, it wasn't a big one at only 7, but when trying to buy a house every drop matters. I looked through my score and these are the differences I found.

1. UTI dropped from 47%-38%

2. Total Credit increased from $14,300-$14,500. 

3. Total credit debt went down from $6,668-$5,473.

4. Installment Loan Debt dropped from $67,091-$66,609.

5. Total debt dropped from $74,209 to $72,533.

There were a couple of odd things that happened also recently, my collections debt on an old collection account did increase by $1, which I thought was weird. Also, my average account age decreased from 4 years 11 months down to 4 years 3 months, apparently 2 old student loans from April 2008 that were bought by another lender have been removed from my report.

Does this look like a normal change to a credit score given all that has happened? Am I lucky this is all it dropped? I just want to be sure I am doing everything I can to make my score the best it can be when I go to buy a house.

Thanks, everyone!

[Anonymous]

Everything you listed from 1-5 would not result in a score drop. 

Your AAoA drop definitely could be responsible for a score drop.  There's some evidence that thresholds may exist at the mid-points between years (4.5, 5.5, 6.5 etc) and you crossed 4.5 years (54 months) when your AAoA moved from 59 months ---> 51 months.  One way you could try and isolate it is to check your score at the end of February, then on March 1 when your AAoA reaches 54 months pull your score again and see if it went up (possibly 7 points).