I am afraid of having too much credit when it comes time to get my house. I have heard that it could be a problem if you have too many open lines of credit, even if they are unused and balances are low. Theory is that you have the potential to go and run up high bills that can make you get behind in your mortgage. And some brokers/bankers may make you close some of the accounts to try to prevent this. Is that true?
More than likely. But, a slew of things will go into a mortgage decision. Income, credit scores, amount of mortgage loan, amount of unsecured debt available to you, amount that is in use {ratios}, amount of downpayment, and so forth and so on. Best bet is pay 'em off if possible and don't apply for anything until after closing.
When it comes to a mortgage, I disagree about the 680 cutoff. My middle score was around 640 and I had no problems getting a prime mortgage, and the amount of available credit I had was never an issue.
Love I wouldn't worry too much about it. I would keep what I had and keep budling up your good credit, if and only if the lender ( underwriter ) feels you have to much available credit and asks you to close some then do so, but we went through FHA last year, we had pretty high lines between the both of us and that was never an issue. They went with his middle score of 646 and we got a very good rate
I was putting 3% down on a conventional mortgage. My debt to income % was very borderline for my mortgage. If it wasn't for the fact that my student loans were still in deferment, my ratio would have been too high.
