Show me how to raise these scores

[Anonymous]

                                                          Mortgage scores

Experian.     748                               Experian.  709

Transunion  736                               Transunion. 718

Equifax.       741                               Equifax.       698

Capital One.  0 balance.                      $16,000 credit limit

Capital One Master Card.    $47,         $10,000 credit limit

Barclaycard.                         $113.       $11,900 credit limit

Best Buy.                                   0.           $10,000 credit limit

Pacific Sales.                             0.           $20,000 credit limit

Merrick Bank.                             0.           $ 2,500  credit limit

Macys.                                        0.           $ 3,000 credit limit

Synchrony Bank.                         0.          $ 4,000 credit limit

Chase Car loan.              $7,400 balance.      Initial Loan in the amount of $30,000

Mortgage loan.                $340,000.                Just took that loan 3 months ago

I do have a few inquiries from trying to get a mortgage this year and I asked for Best Buy and Pacific Sales for credit increases 2x not knowing they were hard pulls.

No matter what I do,  I almost stay around these score numbers and I want them higher so that the mortgage score can go up.  

I am planning to pay the car off, would that increase the score?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Do you have any derogs?  (Lates, collections, chargeoffs, etc.)

Do you know the following (for each of your three reports)?

      AAoA (Average Age of Accounts)

      Age of Oldest Account

      Age of Youngest Account

If you stop applying for new accounts your inquiries will stop having any effect after a year and your three age factors will go up as well.  That will certainly help.

No, paying off your car will not help at all.

There's a small chance that you might get a few points for having exactly one credit card showing a positive balance rather than two.

Since you already own a home, why is it so important to you for your mortgage score to go up?

[Anonymous]

Thanks CreditGuy,

i do have a bk chapter 7 -  7 years ago.   I am purchasing a new property.  The new mortgage on my credit report is a refinance, now I am purchasing another property and I need the higher mortgage score to get better rates.   My older mortgage loans do not show on my reports because they were discharged although I continued to pay.

i would guess the average age of my credit cards is about 6-1/2 years, the latest card  being Best Buy for 3 years.  The oldest account is about 6-1/2 years.

Should I charge about $100 on each card, wait for the statement then pay?  I've done that in the past and I didnt see much of a difference.  

[SouthJamaica]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks CreditGuy,

i do have a bk chapter 7 -  7 years ago.   I am purchasing a new property.  The new mortgage on my credit report is a refinance, now I am purchasing another property and I need the higher mortgage score to get better rates.   My older mortgage loans do not show on my reports because they were discharged although I continued to pay.

i would guess the average age of my credit cards is about 6-1/2 years, the latest card  being Best Buy for 3 years.  The oldest account is about 6-1/2 years.

Should I charge about $100 on each card, wait for the statement then pay?  I've done that in the past and I didnt see much of a difference.  

---

Until the bankruptcy falls off, you are in a "bucket" which will not permit you to go above a certain score. So my advice would be to chill out and keep on doing what you've been doing. Seems to me you're doing very well, and you're doing things the right way.

[Tigremalo2001]

Great advice,,,I am on a bucket also. I got a medical collection $140 paid and a Capitol One Charge off that I paid but they are refusing to honor a pay for delete. It's better to chill out and just paid current bills. I have improved from a 580 to a 618 in just a couple of months, I need a secured card because I got no credit cards and 0 credit debt.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the other folks.  The reason I asked those questions (including the one about derogs) is I could tell there was something that was holding your scores back that was not disclosed in the first post.  Either a derog or the possibility of an ultralow AAoA and Age of Oldest Account.  It turned out to be a major derog.

From what I can see Chapter 7 BKs stay on your report for 10 years.  Can the OP and other folks confirm that? 

I think that our OP should do whatever research he needs to determine the exact month that the BK is slated to fall off.  That would involve pulling the full reports via annualCreditReport.com, confirming that they have the right filing date, etc. 

In the meantime it's possible to marginally improve those scores.  All our OP needs is to get his middle mortgage score to a 720, and that would be just 11 points.

We had a recent contributor who produced evidence that seems to show that FICO may ignore a credit card when it has had no activity for > 12 months.  So if any of your credit cards have not been used in a very long time, I'd use them for something small.  You should be using each of them once every six months just to ensure that they are not closed by the issuer due to inactivity.

So my advice:

       (1) No more new accounts (You'll likely get some points when all inquiries and accounts are at least 1 year old)

       (2) Keep paying down car but avoid paying it off

       (3) Use each card once every 6 months.  Many people just keep them in a shoebox, pull them out every six months and use each one to buy something at a grocery store (say).

Then, in the rare month when you are trying to see how high your scores can go, have all cards report $0 except one (AZEO) with the remaining card reporting a small positive balance.  You don't have to do this every month, just when you are trying to see if you have crossed that 720 mark yet.