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My loan officer in Dayton told me to pay down my card to under 30% before applying, and the underwriter proved her right
Back in March I sat in a loan office in Dayton with a $2,400 balance on a card with a $3,000 limit, and the loan officer said flat out, get that under $900 before we send anything to underwriting. I figured it was a stall tactic since my score was already sitting at 640. I scraped together $1,600 over six weeks, and when we reran everything my score jumped 52 points and the file sailed through. Turns out the balance to limit ratio mattered way more than the on time payment history I was so proud of. Did anyone else get told this same math by their lender, and did it actually move your number that fast?
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holly_thompson981d ago
The whole "under 30% before applying" thing makes for a nice story but I'm not buying that the ratio is what did it. You paid down $1,600 over six weeks, which means you also had six more weeks of on time payments and age on your accounts, so the 52 point jump could just as easily be from time passing. The utilization change might've been a small piece of it, not the main driver like your loan officer wants you to believe. Also a single result like yours doesn't prove much because underwriters look at the whole picture, and plenty of people get approved with cards maxed out and plenty get denied under 30%. Fico scoring is a weird beast and anyone who tells you one trick is the magic answer is selling something.
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