Recovering after settlement

[bschmidt]

I ended up settling an account today with Dyck O'Neal.  They held a $5k promissory note for a short sale that closed in September 2013.  Fannie Mae required it to approve the short sale.  I made payments on the account until December 2013 when a few setbacks required me to prioritize payments and this account was at the bottom of my list.  Unfortunately, but the time I recovered the account was reporting 120 days late and has been ever since then (June '15).  They did little in the way to collect on it, just sending me a letter occasionally.  They finally offered to settle with me for 60% off the balance - just over $1700.  It looked like they were going to sit on it forever keep reporting it late.  I just wanted to move on and position myself to buy a house sometime later next year, so I decided to accept the offer and I paid it today.  I have somewhat high utilization right now (~70% on $25k of CL), but will have all of my CCs paid off later this year.  Other than this account and a 60 day late from the mortgage on the property I sold short, I have 20 years of credit history with no black marks.  How long should I expect to see some upward movement in my FICO score?  I'm currently at a 639 (per Discover Card).  They are reporting to TU and EQ.  Also, any recommendations on ways to improve things are always appreciated.  Thanks.

[RonM21]

If I'm reading what you said correctly, you may not see any gains in points because of the paymnet. The collection alone gives you the hit on your score.  The only change you may see is the status updated to "piad."  Unless the account is deleted, there would not be achange in score unfortunatey, unless I'm missing something.  When you paid that, the best thing would have been to offer a "pay for deletion." When agreed to, once you pay the settled price, they would then delete it from your reports, then it's a negative no longer showing and you get the score jump. Moving forward, paying your cards don is great, but remember to keep one card showing a balance at statement time between 1-9% utilization to receive amaximum points. If you report 0% utilization, you can lose points.  Best of luck.