[quote=Ren]Personal anecdote only: my wife and I haven’t seen a tightening of credit in any way, in either our business or personal lines, and we both have high 700’s/low 800’s scores with all three agencies. There has been no significant rate change. Last week, Citi raised my limit by a couple of thousand on a card that never has a balance higher than $50. Schwab bent over backwards trying to interest us in mortgage products after we asked a few questions.
I have seen tightening for people with questionable credit, which in my mind is the way it should be. People with good (730+) credit, 20% down, low debt, and moderate income can easily qualify for a mortgage today. Credit for larger businesses may be another story.[/quote]
If you don’t mind, let me play a guessing game, since you echo what it seems colleagues are indicating.
Are you and said wife a 0 balance people? If you do have an outstanding mortgage, do your assets cover your mortgage?
I’m suspect that most banks/creditors are very very finicky these days. It seems like it’s not just a matter of whether you’re in good standing or not or if you pay on time….It seems like creditors actually prefer the people who have 0 balance right now. Even with perpetual 0 balance deadbeats like myself, CC companies still make money on the merchant transactions.
I have buddies who always pay on time but maintain a CC balance, and they’ve been having their credit trim. Then I have other buddies who (inclusive) never have a balance and we still get offers from CC companies to transfer, open another account,etc. It’s almost like the CC companies are want those balances paid in full because they sort of don’t want the risk if the economy craps out further and people can’t pay off those balances.
Seems like that was also why American Express for awhile was offering to pay people a few hundred to close their accounts and transfer their balances to other CC companies. I guess they don’t want the risk and want to offload it to others.
Also, according to another buddy ( I have not confirmed this myself yet), BofA is does do interesting things to the mortgage loans IF you bundle in an investment in their brokerage side. I don’t know to what extent they deal though.
