[quote=bearishgurl]AN, what’s the point of stellar credit if you can’t even recover your downpayment from your existing property to retire elsewhere?

That’s why I stated I may have been better off removing $250K+ of my home “equity” back in 2004-2006. By the time I want to move away and “retire” (2014), the “deed-in-lieu” incident would have been 7-8 years behind me.

And I would have had the “mattress-cash” for a downpayment when my credit recovered :=}[/quote]
FICO score and the ability to sell is two completely different point. So, why even bring them up in the same argument. FICO score is as relevant as saying the sky is blue, but what’s the point of blue sky when you can’t even recover your down payment.

You took the risk for not selling in 2004-2006 at the peak, so don’t whine about it when you end up on the wrong side of the bet. Staying put in a house is the same as buying a house. You made a conscious decision to live in that house. If you know in 2004 that you’d retire in 10 years and you don’t want to live in that house after that, why didn’t you take advantage of the bubble and sell? Unless you got caught up in the bubble and hope it’ll never crash.

BTW, like flu said, there are other scoring agencies who have scores higher than 850, but FICO score max out at 850. Here some info on FICO: Linky