What scores do lenders pull?

[lsutigers03]

I pulled my fico scores today and I was very excited at what the TU and EQ scores were.  I don't want to celebrate prematurely if a creditor will pull another score from somewhere else.  I'm looking to buy a house this year so will my scores here tell me accurately where I stand so when I go for a loan I'm not surprised?  Sorry if this is a dumb question.  I don't know much about credit outside of not signing up for too much too fast and not missing payments.

Message Edited by lsutigers03 on 04-28-2009 02:39 PM

[smallfry]

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@lsutigers03 wrote:
I pulled my fico scores today and I was very excited at what the TU and EQ scores were.  I don't want to celebrate prematurely if a creditor will pull another score from somewhere else.  I'm looking to buy a house this year so will my scores here tell me accurately where I stand so when I go for a loan I'm not surprised?  Sorry if this is a dumb question.  I don't know much about credit outside of not signing up for too much too fast and not missing payments.

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Someone will correct me if I am wrong but I think the scores you pull here are either the scores the lenders pull for a mortgage or they are very close. 

[lsutigers03]

The reason I'm asking is because I talked to someone that said they pulled their EQ score from here and then a month later a lender ran the score and there was a 100 point difference.

[llecs]

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lsutigers03 wrote:
The reason I'm asking is because I talked to someone that said they pulled their EQ score from here and then a month later a lender ran the score and there was a 100 point difference.

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The scores should be the same if the lender pulled a FICO score. 95% or so of the lenders out there pull a FICO score. Sometimes a lender may pull a FICO score but the version of score used is different. I lurk over in Mortgages and every post I read said that their score from here matched the lenders. This site and most lenders use Beacon 5.0 for Equifax. There were two new versions of EQ FICO just introduced and that is the FICO08 equivalant called Beacon 9.0 and EQ and FICO just launched a mortgage-enhanced FICO score. But they just launched this and the odds are almost nil that anyone has encountered this yet. If ever unsure, you should ask your friend what's listed next to EQ's score. Ask if it is FICO, and if FICO, what does it say.

Another possibility is that something happened between when they pulled and when the lender pulled. A lot can happen during that time.

[haulingthescoreup]

The EQ score is the one most likely to match. myFICO provides the Beacon 5.0 score. A 100-hundred point difference in a month would have me pulling my EQ score report here PDQ, worrying about some new baddie that popped up.

With your TU score, there's a more-than-decent chance that they will pull a TU04 FICO score, whereas the score you get here (and at www.transunioncs.com) is a TU98 score. We are all less-than-patiently waiting for TU to switch to the new version for consumer pulls.

With the EX score, of course, there is nothing to compare it with, but almost all lenders use the Experian FairIsaac Risk Model v2, which is what we used to be able to pull here, back in the day.

I would definitely ask my lender what the name of each score was that they pulled.


eta: whoops, sorry, for some reason llecs reply didn't show when I pulled up this thread.

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 04-28-2009 05:19 PM

[llecs]

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haulingthescoreup wrote:
eta: whoops, sorry, for some reason llecs reply didn't show when I pulled up this thread.

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I was hiding down at the bottom.

[lsutigers03]

Thanks I appreciate the responses.  I pulled my scores from here today and TU was 784 and EQ was 769.  I was happy about that but then when I heard that there could be huge differences between those scores and what a lender would pull I was getting worried.

[llecs]

As Hauling mentioned, you could see differences in TU due to the version pulled. It is a crap shoot. Many report about 30 points or so difference (lower) if TU04 is pulled over TU98.