Anything they can do you can do. Also, all the credit score companies are crap. The only one you should use is. Most mortgage companyies use fico scores only. Experian & Transunion use their own calcualtions which are wrong. They are geared for credit cards. myfico is more expensive but you can get all three. If you subscribe to it just move your target score to match what your existing score is so that if it moves it will alert you right away.

Pay debt more than half the balance. Start with smaller cards.

500 balance on a 550 credit limit card is worse than 2000 on a 5000 credit limit card.

Just dispute everything that you think is negative.

You only need 620 to get a good mortgage anyway. 660 is even better.

Get the mortgage guy to earn your business, buy getting him to give you 1/4 percent off. I used to be involved with a mortgage company. We would get rate sheets from the bank with a table that tells us how much profit % we would make if we gave the loan at 5% with it incrementing up at 1/8%. If the loan came in at 5% we would turn around and tell the customer that they have been approved for 6.75% so we would be able to take a heft profit. The bank allowed us manueverability to gain the customer, but most customers pick 1 lender and they don’t get multiple quotes. Just watch out for the lenders that give a really low number. If it doesn’t make sense it probably doesn’t. My friend wouldn’t use my company because we were quoting 10.5% when another internet company quoted 5.75%. His score was 550 with rescent debt consolidation credit action. When he went to close the mortgage company told him that his rate had jumped to 12.5% and that he needed another $15000 down to close and charged him 6000 in fees. We were going to do the loan no fees. So watchout when someone is promissing the kitchen sink.