A couple of things that your mortgage scores do not like are ratio of cards with a balance reporting, even if your utilization is in an acceptable range, and also new accounts/inqs. A good way to boost the older FICO scores (including 5, 4, and 2) is to practice AZEO, where you let all revolving accounts report at a $0 balance except for 1. The 1 you need to let report at less than 9%. The card you let report the balance should be a major bank card, and not one issued by Chase or Synchrony. Do not use a store card or a card issued by a CU. As far as new accounts, FICO 5, 4, and 2 are more sensitive to both inquiries and new accounts, so if you have either of these on your profile currently your FICO 8s may have already bounced back, but the older models take a bit longer. Hopefully some mortgage experts can chime in with more specific advice and questions about your individual profile, but those are just a couple of general things to throw out there. I wish you the best of luck throughout the process!
@TravelNut wrote:
@Ficoproblems247 wrote:A couple of things that your mortgage scores do not like are ratio of cards with a balance reporting, even if your utilization is in an acceptable range, and also new accounts/inqs. A good way to boost the older FICO scores (including 5, 4, and 2) is to practice AZEO, where you let all revolving accounts report at a $0 balance except for 1. The 1 you need to let report at less than 9%. The card you let report the balance should be a major bank card, and not one issued by Chase or Synchrony. Do not use a store card or a card issued by a CU. As far as new accounts, FICO 5, 4, and 2 are more sensitive to both inquiries and new accounts, so if you have either of these on your profile currently your FICO 8s may have already bounced back, but the older models take a bit longer. Hopefully some mortgage experts can chime in with more specific advice and questions about your individual profile, but those are just a couple of general things to throw out there. I wish you the best of luck throughout the process!
Good info here!
Question: If you have Zero new accounts in the last 2 yrs like myself but add one or two new ones, how long will it take to recover those points lost due to new accounts added? Is it like 1 yr before those new inquires don't have as much impact or longer or shorter than 1 yr? This is in reference to the 5,4,2 scoring model
Ok so here is a quick chart I just whipped up to use as an example, it's not the best thing in the world, but it will help show a bit of difference. The inquiries will affect you for 365 days. New accounts can really vary by profile so I don't know if I am educated enough to really tell you when that will start to make a difference, but AAoA always plays a role in your score. Newer, clean profiles suffer from a little bit of a new account penalty too when your youngest relvover is less than a year old. Ok, this chart has 3 recent dates, it will show when I just had an inq fall off of my EX report last week and then went from 2 cards reporting to AZEO and how my different EX scores were affected.
2/19/21: 2 scorable inquiries, 2 cards reporting a balance
2/21/21: 1 scorable inquiry, 2 cards reporting a balance
2/25/21: 1 scorable inquiry, 1 card reporting a balance (AZEO)
Experian FICO Scores | |||
Score Model | 2/19/21 | 2/20/21 | 2/25/21 |
Score 8 | 747 | 748 | 748 |
Score 2 | 732 | 742 | 746 |
Score 3 | 747 | 756 | 758 |
Auto 2 | 736 | 745 | 749 |
Auto 8 | 756 | 759 | 759 |
Bankcard 2 | 744 | 754 | 759 |
Bankcard 8 | 763 | 764 | 772 |
You can clearly see how the older models were affected more than score 8 by the inq dropping off. Also, a larger impact with AZEO too, with BC8 being the only newer scoring model affected by the change from 2 cards reporting to AZEO.
Sorry for the info overload, but since I had these profile changes just happen to me it was easy to quickly whip up a visual to help explain it a little better!
@Sitori wrote:Hi everyone
Ive been working on my scores for years. No matter how much my scores go up, the mortgage score never moves. Why is the mortgage score so much lower than Fico 8, or others? It's strange that no matter how much the others move, these particular "mortgage scores" dont. Im speaking about the fico 2, 4 and 5. These are the scores generally used for mortgage correct?
How can I boost these?
I had the same issue for a long time, my mortgage scores much much lower -- in the neighborhood of 60 points lower -- than my FICO 8's.
I'd come to the conclusion that the chief distinguishing factors between the two, at least among "clean" scorecards, are:
1. The mortgage scores are more seriously affected by "newness" factors -- i.e. inquiries, age of newest account, average age of accounts.
2. The mortgage scores are more interested in seeing a large number of accounts with zero balances than they are in seeing low percentage dollar utilization, while the FICO 8's are relatively forgiving of the number of accounts with balances, and are more likely to reward or punish the percentage dollar utilization factors.
During the past year this theory was supported by what happened to my profile. During this past year, my mortgage scores have moved up, and my FICO 8's have moved down, to a point that the mortgage scores are now substantially higher than my FICO 8's. On Experian, e.g., the spread is now +36. I feel certain the reason is that my utilization percentages have crept up to uncharacteristally high numbers, while the average age of accounts has been growing, the age of newest account hasn't reset in 9 months, and the numbers of accounts with and without balances have stayed the same.
