Usually I have well below one third of my revolving accounts reporting a balance.
The other day, when I had 6 accounts reporting a balance, I closed my 3 Synchrony accounts, bringing my total of reporting revolving open accounts down to 21.
On one of the cards, although I'd paid the balance over a week earlier, Synchrony reported an $18 balance when it reported closing the accounts, thus putting me at 7 accounts reporting a balance with only 21 accounts open.
I just got a MyFICO alert that my TU FICO 8 score has dropped 5 points, from 811 to 806. The alert added a negative reason code that had not appeared when I pulled my report a few weeks ago:
"Too many accounts with balances."
This seems to support the view that 1/3 of accounts carrying a balance is indeed a breakpoint.
[Update 2:54 PM. Oops, I just noticed that there are 4 negative reason codes, none of which appeared with my last 3B report:
- Length of time revolving accounts have been established.
- Too many inquiries last 12 months.
- Time since most recent account opening is too short.
- Too many accounts with balances.
But there is nothing worse in my report today than there was 2 weeks ago. Length of time, inquiries, most recent account... were all as bad 2 weeks ago as they are today.]
Update 4:24 PM Credit Guy in Dixie advises of another possible reason for scoring hit, that FICO treats closed accounts as having zero credit limit, so that even a small balance could be interpreted as >100% utilization.
My reports support this too - I have 14 card accounts. When only 2 report a balance, it is fine. I just got a new report the other day, and 3 reported a balance, and the reason codes were the same as yours. My discover card had a pending charge through the statement end date. So while my statement balance was 0, it reported balance with pending charge 
All my scores dropped 5-7 points when discover reported its balance.
What's the status of your TU file where you're seeing the 1/3? Clean I think IIRC?
On my dirty tax lien / deliquency enabled file (occurred when I had a collection on there too) I see 1/3 only on EQ FICO 8, and 1/2 on TU/EX FICO 8 and that's held consistently for the past few years... EQ FICO 5 appears to be 1/2 on my file.
Clean profiles may be different, I got a real oddity on EX FICO 8 when my tax lien came off but I think going to just chalk that up as a broken datapoint until I get better testing in sometime later.
@Revelate wrote:What's the status of your TU file where you're seeing the 1/3? Clean I think IIRC?
On my dirty tax lien / deliquency enabled file (occurred when I had a collection on there too) I see 1/3 only on EQ FICO 8, and 1/2 on TU/EX FICO 8 and that's held consistently for the past few years... EQ FICO 5 appears to be 1/2 on my file.
Clean profiles may be different, I got a real oddity on EX FICO 8 when my tax lien came off but I think going to just chalk that up as a broken datapoint until I get better testing in sometime later.
No negatives.
So are you saying that you have seen a difference among the FICO 8 responses to number of revolvers reporting balances, with EQ treating 1/3 as a breakpoint, and TU and EX treating 1/2 as a breakpoint?
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Revelate wrote:What's the status of your TU file where you're seeing the 1/3? Clean I think IIRC?
On my dirty tax lien / deliquency enabled file (occurred when I had a collection on there too) I see 1/3 only on EQ FICO 8, and 1/2 on TU/EX FICO 8 and that's held consistently for the past few years... EQ FICO 5 appears to be 1/2 on my file.
Clean profiles may be different, I got a real oddity on EX FICO 8 when my tax lien came off but I think going to just chalk that up as a broken datapoint until I get better testing in sometime later.
No negatives.
So are you saying that you have seen a difference among the FICO 8 responses to number of revolvers reporting balances, with EQ treating 1/3 as a breakpoint, and TU and EX treating 1/2 as a breakpoint?
Yup that's been consistent for me at least. EQ also has another breakpoint at 1/2, but of the 3 EQ is the only one that has a breakpoint under 1/2.
Incidently the aggregate damage on all 3 bureaus for getting to 1/2 was nearly point identical (7-8 points) just with the EQ one going -3 and -4 = -7 totals where the others hit it in one step.
@Revelate wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Revelate wrote:What's the status of your TU file where you're seeing the 1/3? Clean I think IIRC?
On my dirty tax lien / deliquency enabled file (occurred when I had a collection on there too) I see 1/3 only on EQ FICO 8, and 1/2 on TU/EX FICO 8 and that's held consistently for the past few years... EQ FICO 5 appears to be 1/2 on my file.
Clean profiles may be different, I got a real oddity on EX FICO 8 when my tax lien came off but I think going to just chalk that up as a broken datapoint until I get better testing in sometime later.
No negatives.
So are you saying that you have seen a difference among the FICO 8 responses to number of revolvers reporting balances, with EQ treating 1/3 as a breakpoint, and TU and EX treating 1/2 as a breakpoint?
Yup that's been consistent for me at least. EQ also has another breakpoint at 1/2, but of the 3 EQ is the only one that has a breakpoint under 1/2.
Incidently the aggregate damage on all 3 bureaus for getting to 1/2 was nearly point identical (7-8 points) just with the EQ one going -3 and -4 = -7 totals where the others hit it in one step.
Your distinguishing between the 3 bureaus on this inspired me to look at my EQ & EX reports.
My current EQ & EX reports both also contain 7 reported balances against 21 open accounts, and my EQ FICO 8 went up 3 points while my EX FICO 8 hasn't moved.
So go figure.
Maybe there's something else at play here.