@Anonymous wrote:Based off of Credit Karma data my Transunion score dropped by 30 points from 789 to 759. My Equifax score has not dropped at all. Reviewing the report it seems the mortgage refinance I did in July finally reported to Transunion in Dec but has not hit Equifax yet. The 'old' mortgage was paid off and a new one issued for the existing balance of the 'old' mortgage. Did my score drop because I got a 'new' mortgage? Just seems like a big hit considering my outstanding debt didn't change and my required payments were reduced. Aside from the mortgage the only other debt I have is whatever the current balance of my CC is before I pay it off at the end of the month (never exceeds 4% utilization)
Welcome to the forums!
You're doing fine; Credit Karma scores are nowhere close to the gold standard as hardly anyone uses it for a primary underwriting decision score, and while some versions of FICO have some installment utillization metrics which a refinance can affect (since you were at some paydown level previously and then went to 100% on the new loan and probably close to that on aggregate too since mortgage loans are so large), and it's a new account but honestly none of that really matters.
End of the day if you saved money by doing the refinance, then seriously congratulations and don't worry about what your credit scores did: if you're not using your credit to either save or make you money, you're doing it wrong 
Taking a hit on your credit score is simply the price of using your credit.
@Anonymous wrote:Based off of Credit Karma data my Transunion score dropped by 30 points from 789 to 759. My Equifax score has not dropped at all. Reviewing the report it seems the mortgage refinance I did in July finally reported to Transunion in Dec but has not hit Equifax yet. The 'old' mortgage was paid off and a new one issued for the existing balance of the 'old' mortgage. Did my score drop because I got a 'new' mortgage? Just seems like a big hit considering my outstanding debt didn't change and my required payments were reduced. Aside from the mortgage the only other debt I have is whatever the current balance of my CC is before I pay it off at the end of the month (never exceeds 4% utilization)
Your Vantage Scores, which are supplied by Credit Karma, are not important.
However, refinancing can cause a score drop in some FICO score models as well, because it usually raises one's aggregate installment loan utilization percentage.
If, e.g., you had a mortgage that was $200k, and paid it down to $100k, and had no other installment loans open, your aggregage installment loan utilization percentage would be 50%. In most profiles this would be boosting your FICO score on most models.
If you refinanced that, your first report would show a $100k mortgage of which $100k, or 100%, is owed, so that your installment utilization percentage has increased from 50% to 100%. This would cause you to lose points in most, if not all, FICO scoring models.
But of course if you refinanced at a lower rate you're probably saving a ton of money, so it's worth it. And you'll get the points back over time.
@Anonymous wrote:A question for the OP that I don't believe was answered thus far: What was your original loan utilization (balance against original balance) just prior to you paying it off, refinancing and obtaining the new loan? It's a given that your loan utilization is currently 100% after the refinance, but I'm just curious what your utilization was prior. I would venture to guess that it was below 70% and possibly even 50% (those are two commonly discussed possible thresholds) based on the scoring drop due to refinancing. I would think that if your original loan was at say 85% or so utilization that you wouldn't have experienced a drop as significant as the one you did.
Well remember this is Vantage score rather than FICO. It's obviously not the same but on Vantage there may be a Michelin style tradeline rating system on installment loans which we don't see in FICO 8: when my mortgage reported on FICO 8 across the board I lost the 22ish points I gained during my installment loan testing; however, I bounced from 747 -> 787 or thereabouts on VS 3.0 as soon as it landed and I basically at 100% installment utilization.
Vantage penalizes some files though for new inquiries and maybe new accounts hard, if I had to guess it may well have been this rather than anything else. I get hammered on my TU VS 3 for this, not on either EQ or EX VS 3, and of course not on FICO 8.