Your losing maybe 20 to 25 points max in my experience from thos inqs. I dropped 8 at once and my Fico moved from 763 to 788. But then again, banks have their own extrapolated score systems too.

having too much available repective of income amount is not good either. I'm not sure where to red line starts but I would suspect having twice as much available to you than you make is borderline risk.

I am going through the mortgage process right now and have recently been approved. What I did was make sure all my credit cards had a zero balance for one full cycle, before starting the application process. Even with that, banks are being anal on the applications. I�m purchasing my 3rd home, and have never experienced as excruciating as this (I always pay everything on time and buy within my means).

I�m in a �LUL� period for about 3 months while I go through this process�once I close on the house, I�ll start up the credit card / coin churn process again.

Here�s two simple pieces of advice:

1 � Don�t give the banks any reason to reject your loan application�they probably will in this climate.

2 � Pay all credit cards balances in full and live within your means. I�d stay away from any house that requires a Jumbo Loan�you may have to live with if forever since nationally house prices are falling, and finding someone three years from now, who is willing to pay what you�re paying now, will be almost impossible.

Good Luck

I've gotten 20 something cards in past year and my credit score has gone up 25 points. The "hits" of 2 points each only lasted for a month or two while the available credit not used increased my score.

Of course just the number of inquiries alone can be a reason for more cc denials but I haven't hit that yet. (On every app-o-rama I keep thinking This is it). And I don't know what effect all the inquiries could have on any re-financing I may do in the future.

My FICO is in top 10%, my Vantage in top 5%, I own my home with 25 years payments on mortgage, so I may be different.

virtually impossible in many parts of the country

This doesn't make any sense? I would think with 20 new cards in 1 year you would drastically lower your average age unless it's heavily weighted with many years already, and those additional cards this year signficantly reduced your utilization. So what's your strategy on applying? Oh, I'm just now seeing the 25yr mortgage.

The top tier rate threshold seems to be around 750-760 depending on lender. So it makes sense 740 does not get the same rate tas 775. A 759 might not get the same rate as 761, so if you lie on that border, it makes sense. However it seems if you have 761 or 810, it doesnt make much difference to the lender.

As noted above there are many factors that affect your score, and applications are actually fairly low in terms of the hit you take on your score.

For the past 5 years I have been getting alerts from equifax (which uses real FICO) every time my score changes. From what I've observed the biggest hits have come from increasing my utilization on an individual card, this can knock the score anywhere from 20-40 points, particularly if more than one card goes up at the same time. Note, it doesn't matter whether I carry the balance, I get the hit just the same if I charge $5k on $10k card or do a 0% balance transfer. The score usually goes back up when I pay off the card, but not always by the same amount. Applications seem to have little effect though paradoxically I've seen scores rise when a new card is reported (lower utilization I guess). The other major hits come when you close an old account - this seems to unfairly penalize consumers when banks change the terms, i.e. new annual fees, etc. But this effect is also reduced as you get older and your other accounts age.

Over the past 3 years we've bought 1 car (.9%) and closed 2 home mortgages (the latest at 4.25%/30year fixed) so I have never felt it prudent to play the app-o-rama game. We generally apply for 1 new mileage-bonus card per person each year, and don't seem to have any problems.

However if your score is within 20 points of the cutoff - 760 and 720 seem to be key threshholds - I would not roll the dice for a few miles if you have a major mortgage in the works. the difference between .25% on the life of a loan will cost you far more in real cash than the value of your FF bonus miles, even if you refi later you'll pay thousands in costs. Better to wait - there is always another deal around the corner.

Now of course if you don't need a mortgage, your credit score is 780+, and you don't plan to jack your utilization with high balances (i.e. for a 0% offer) then by all means apply as you wish. But not too many people fall into that category.

The new mortgage caps will probably have a larger impact on some people than credit card applications:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...=ITP_pageone_1

Robyn

Well.. that isn't what you said in the the post I quoted. What you stated is completely false and I stand by my original statement.

I believe the riskier person is the person that just recently opened up 5 accounts - I'm not advocating that at all.

And from my own experience of having more available credit than income and obtaining a mortgage and multiple car loans, I'd say that DTI (actual monthly debt/income), down payment, and history play more of a factor than available credit.

Thanks for the info in your post.

What does Equifax charge for this service? Sounds very useful.

Assets and overall net worth come into the equation to level out the credit over income perspective, as well

You can use Myfico.com for monitoring. It is about $99/yr.

Somewhat OT - but when I clicked on a link from some points website - it said I could get free credit reports once a year from a website I can't remember. So I got these credit reports (which told me what I already knew - that we had X credit cards and they were all in ok status). But when I tried to get my and my husband's FICO scores - I got to places where I had to sign up for this - that or the other thing (although some were on a "free trial" basis). Is there any way to get a free FICO score - no strings attached? I'm basically more curious than in need of knowing it. Robyn

I haven't found one and would like to know too. Some (most?) of those sites are very misleading with the "credit report" that doesn't include FICO scores.

Do your homework before signing up for any service. Myfico.com gives you Equifax only. I wish I knew more about all this to give better advice. I did find it frustrating to sign up for a service for a free score only to have to pay for it later.

Some of those note I have read and its totally automated and many don't make any sense or logic.