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I finally figured out why I have a ceiling on my credit score.
I was looking at my FICO Quarterly Monitoring report and saw an entry "Total amount you owe on all non-mortgage accounts".
The number was HUGE. Twenty times my revolving debt. What the heck? Then it dawned on me. The only way they could come up with such a large number was to include our second mortgage (HELOC). Every penny from that account went to home improvements (and we are not even close to "under water" in home debt)
Is this possible? Is a HELOC (second mortgage) classified as "non-mortgage" debt?
HELOCs and LOCs are scored as revolving credit up to a certain limit. That limit varies by FICO version.
Not only the CRAs but the banks themselves rate your credit as either installment or revovling. My own bank told me that a HELOC is considered by them to be 65% revovling and 35% installment. Some have a hard number instead of using a percentage as to the portion of it being revovling.
Each of the three bureaus has our HELOC rated differently. The weirdest one is TU which has it rated as an overdraft line of credit. A 50K overdraft line of credit. None of the 3 bureaus have it listed as a mortgage even though it is the only thing resembling a mortgage that is on the report. Of course the house associated with the line has been sold for nearly 7 years and we don't owe a balance. But the tradeline is still on there, open and reporting a zero balance with payments made satisfactorily, so who am I to argue?
When I was a banker I once approved a $1,000,000+ overdraft but that is a different story.
Thank you for your answers confirming my predicament. I am pretty discouraged now. I think my dreams of "Great" credit are lessening due to silly stuff like this.