Score boost after 18 months of no lates?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I had my last late (public record) 1 year, 4 months ago (June, 2010). Will I get any kind of a score boost at 18 months (1 year, 6 months)?

Thank you!

Lol )

[haulingthescoreup]

Probably not. You never know, though.

A public record is a pretty fierce negative, and it puts you in one of the two negative score buckets.

Do you have other negatives reporting?

[Anonymous]

Thank you Hauling. My PR was a BK7, so there are other accounts listed as IIB. So that is not the only negative on my CR unfortunately. Does anyone know when, incrementally speaking, your score boosts after bad marks? Like 12 months, 6 months, 24 months, 36 months etc?

Thank you!

[haulingthescoreup]

With everyday items like lates, there is definitely a fade with time. For instance, for scoring purposes, 30 days don't count at all after 2 years, and 60's count like 30's.

There's also a fade with serious negatives, including BK, but it's not as dramatic. You might start seeing something at 18 months and then again at 24 months, then after each additional year. (Note: just because your scores start to recover doesn't mean that lenders will look on you more approvingly. That's a separate issue.)

Much of the score recovery seen after BK is due to the presence of new, clean credit, but scores will even recover if you don't add any new credit at all, just more slowly.

And for those still in BK, don't go adding credit before you're clear!

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Hauling. I have seen increases (164 points since last year) but the increases seem random at best over the past 6 months or so. They don't really seem to follow any pattern. Need only 6 more points for my mortgage. So I am hoping for a "random" 6 point increase from the FICO nerds soon. )

[haulingthescoreup]

You already know about how to tweak the reporting of any CC accounts, right? (As few accounts with balances as possible, minimal balance on one, blah blah.)

When you pull a FICO report, either EQ or TU98, what are the negatives in order on screen two? Anything there that you can work on?

Congrats on the incredible recovery that you've already made!

[Anonymous]

I have 4 cards, 3 of which report @ 0 and 1 reports around 2% or so. The list of factors for EQ is 1st: PR, 2nd: short account history

[haulingthescoreup]

Sounds like you've tweaked things as well as you can. Hope you get some points at 18 months!

eta: Unless you know someone with a very old, squeaky clean CC who would be willing to add you as an authorized user, in order to get some age. That could backfire, though: we often see more score loss for negatives with older histories. I suppose it's less likely that those with long-established history have negatives, or something.

Anyway, I figured I'd better point out both the positive and negative chances. If you do this, and your score drops, you can get back off the AU card, but it will take a reporting cycle for it to fall off your reports. Also, not all cards report AU's, so you'd want to check around here on the card type.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Hauling. I actually have some old SL accounts that were opened in 1997/1998 that are reporting on TU and EX but not on EQ. I am trying to get the lender to report to EQ, but no luck so far. I am trying though!

I am not comfortable really asking anyone to become an AU. The way I see it, I will get to where I need to be at some point, and I'd rather not bother anyone about it. But thank you for the suggestion!