Any dealers or people familiar with credit:

If you have lines of credit (such a loans) you do not use, will that hurt your chances of getting approved for other bigger loans? I'm talking more about Loans as opposed to credit cards.

I would guess so but let me explain my scenario:

I have an Yamaha credit line with HSBC that is fully paid off (meaning I owe nothing on it) and the line is around 12k.

If I apply for a financing loan for a new Evo would it be better if I close out that Yamaha credit line? or does it help because It was opened April 08 and was paid off in less than year? Btw, I have great credit and make sufficient income.

I do know that if you have too many credit cards and do not use some them, you can potentially be hurting or bringing down your credit score. So the cards you should keep are the ones that you use on a consistent basis and payoff in full month to month.

 

it depends on your other lines of credit. if you have a card you have had open longer than that one that you use regularly then it should hurt to close that one. if that is your longest open account i would hang on to it. as far as having a lot of loans i think i understand what you are asking. being approved is based upon your total debt so if you have a bunch of loans totaling x amount and x amount is a fairly large sum of money based on your income etc. then you might not get approved for a 30k+loan. if your interested in gettin an evo x let me know and we can talk further or i can give you our finance guys number and he can answer your questions in much more detail than i can

 

Yea i'm mainly concerned on the loans as opposed to the credit cards. I'm just asking if it benefits me to have a loan that amount(12k) and have had it paid off within less than a year. Btw, my other cards have max credit lines of 13k to 23k. Those are just the credit cards. I have kept them all current and never missed a payment.

FTY- I'm def interested but you are located in CALI! Need a car by the 3rd week of this month. Time is ticking!

 

don't close out open lines of credit with zero balances. It keeps your credit to balance ratio looking better.

 

Yea, banks look at your total credit line (all your totals added up) vs how much you owe on them. the smaller you owe in comparison to what is available is a good thing.

 

Credit utilization makes up about 30% of the weight of your credit score. So the more available credit you have, the better, and the less actual revolving debt (credit cards, HELOCs, etc), also the better.

Lowering your utilization by about 10% (e.g. from 30% to 20%) will boost your credit score 10-20 points or so (very rough estimate). See www.creditkarma.com for more details on how to improve your score, and how various factors affect your score.

 

Let's break this down. So should I close out this Yamaha Credit Line since I will not be using it in the near future so that I can have a better chance at getting approved? Or should it be kept open since it looks good?

 

If there is no balance on it, keep it open.

 

Cool beans. Thats the answer I wanted.

 

Depends on a number of factors!

If you want to make the best decision (rather than asking random people on the internet) you should get your credit report and look at the factors that are influencing your score. Only then will you have documentation of the actions that will improve your personal FICO score.

 

even if there is no balance there is still an available line of credit which can negatively affect you. I would have your limit lowered, this will help.

 

Yea even if I had my credit report that would help me much. As someone said it above, there are many factors.

Can you actually call them to lower your credit limit? I've always known of the option to increase it, but never to lower it down :-/ Has someone ever done this before?

 

yes just call them and tell them what you want it lowered to. just remember if you extend your credit elsewhere you may have trouble getting it raised back to where it was originally.

 

Uhh lowering your available credit increases your utilization, which negatively affects your credit score. I'm not sure why you would possibly want to do that.

This is why you want to regularly increase your credit limits on all your open lines of credit, so that you can effectively drive down your utilization over time. The more available credit you have, the easier it is to get more credit. Your best bet is to just look at your credit report though. CreditKarma.com has a calculator that will estimate how various changes to your credit history would affect your credit score.

 

Pretty nifty website. Is it free or do I have to cancel within the 1st month?