Credit Scores from Mortgage Pre-Approval

As everyone now knows, we have purchased a new home and are currently in the process of getting the inspection scheduled and completed, as well as getting all of the financing lined up. My banker pulled our credit reports last week during the pre-approval process and said our scores were really good, but at the time there was so much other stuff going on, I did not inquire what the scores from the three bureaus were at that moment.

We definitely knew approximately what our scores were from the bureaus, as I discussed in my previous post How Do I Find My Credit Score? In that post, I discussed being able to monitor your Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion credit reports and scores by using annualcreditreport.com.

Well I was surprised to receive letters for both my wife and I this week from our bank highlighting our credit scores from all three bureaus as well as detailing some of the pros and minuses on each of our files. I am happy to report that our scores more than blew me away, and I was so proud of my wife and I for maintaining such great credit scores.

Wife
786 Equifax
753 TransUnion
768 Experian

Me
813 Equifax
793 TransUnion
820 Experian

There are two things that surprised me. First, I was really proud of my wife’s scores. She knew very little about credit scores and maintaining a healthy credit line before meeting me, and we have worked really hard to boost her scores for what is our most important purchase ever.

Second, I am still rather surprised by my TransUnion score. I was curious, so I decided to log into my CreditKarma account, as I discussed in my post United Airlines Card Downgrade Impact to Credit Scores, to compare my scores. I maintained a 774 score for a really long time according to CreditKarma. It dipped down to 772 tonight, undoubtedly because of my hard pull for the pre-approval. Obviously when looking at my actual TransUnion score, 793, there is something that is not quite aligned.

So in other words, take the scores you receive from some of these third parties with a grain of salt, because not all of them align exactly. I count on it more to at least monitor any activity on our files.

Regardless, we are really happy and should be able to sail through the approval process with our high scores.