[ChiliMcFinn]

Neither of us have ever bought a home, so we're floundering around here, trying to figure out what's what. Let me know if y'all have any advice to help set us up with our first mortgage, I'll try to be thorough with relevant information.

I was on AoC ages ago, and my file was such a wreck whereas my husband had no file at all! On advisement, we've spent the intervening time period working on his file in hopes of buying a home. My file is still a wreck but since no one was bothering me about it, we thought I ought to just lay low and let things age (I thnk TowerRat referred to this as the "poor man's bankruptcy"). To prevent any CAs from the temptation of bleeding my bad tradelines onto his file we've kept everything in his name; the bank accounts, all loans and credit, all bills.

His file is now just over two years old. There are eight total tradelines, of which only Equifax reports all eight. One is an old electric bill CO still apparently with the OC, reporting only on Equifax; that is the only delinquent tradeline. He has one credit card with a limit of $10k and that is at basically 100% utilization, but has perfect reporting otherwise (reports on all three). There are two auto loans with no lates (reporting on all three). One personal loan for $4000 has been paid off a year early and reports on all three as a closed, paid in full, with no lates ever. One personal loan is being incorrectly reported on Equifax and TransUnion as paid in full and closed two years early with no lates ever; Experian reports it correctly as open with balance owing and no lates ever. BUT this tradeline has a duplicate where it's all switched up and Experian reports it closed/paid in full while the other two report it correctly as open and paying as agreed. The last tradeline is for a third personal loan - all from the same bank - and that one only reports on Equifax and Experian, no lates ever. Two hard inquiries within the last six months, reports to Experian only; no hards within twelve months on the other two and we opted-out years ago.

His mid-score is 641 and I'd like to bump that up to help us get a 100% financing stated loan. It's a buyers market in our locale but not as extreme as some, short sales aren't common and prices are fairly steady though houses are sitting for months and sellers are offering a few concessions. We have reasonable expectations of how much house we can pay for, so my biggest concerns on buying are knowing what we're doing and closing costs. I want the best rate I can manage as a hedge against future possible market downturn.

Okay now, some of this stuff is obvious and I remember it from way back on the other board. First off, I have to get that utilization down. I'm not sure whether dropping every spare penny onto paying it down would be best (we will not be able to get it to less than 50% soon that way, though we can make a big dent in it fairly quickly). A clear second option would be to get another card - having one with a high limit means we can get a second company to match it. Immediately drops utilization to 50%, but that's more inquiries and another new file... may not be worth it, I dunno, plus our Visa is through our bank and they haven't drop-kicked our interest through the stratosphere despite maxing the card out but I'm pretty certain any other CC company would! I'm going to see if I can't sweet-talk the electric company with the old CO into a pay-for-delete agreement in writing.

Other than that, I'm not sure. Utilization's a biggie, only one bad tradeline, seems like the only thing holding his score back otherwise is age and only time will fix that.

So. How can we get into a home? Any advice, O Wise Ones? I pay in sweet, rich choklit.