Credit score issue for financing

[Asher Anthes]

Okay, so I'm trying to do a cash out refi. I've talked to several lenders, and apparently a middle score of 700 is a big cut off point. One mortgage broker told me the difference between having a 701 score and a 699 score on a 30 year fixed is a FULL .5%, which is think is a little crazy.

The problem is a few months ago, I had a middle score of around 705 i believe, and i just did two soft pulls today and am getting 685 and 696. I want to refinance NOW, but with my scores so slightly below that magic cut off point which would save me thousands in the long run... I'm not sure what to do.

I don't know why my score is so low, I've had a mortgage for 2 years, three student loans for almost 4 years, a credit card for 8 years never late on anything, I had one collection 5 years ago, but it's been long settled.

Is there any quick fix that will raise my score only 10 or 20 points? that's all i need.

[Dejan N.]

Most credit reporting services that lenders use have a feature that give available points for improvement. Looks something like this, for example your three scores would look like this 698 +44 , 702 +29 , 711 + 20. That plus number is usually quick fix, say one of your credit cards is close to the credit limit.
Score wizard is another service available, relatively inexpensive $5-$10, it uses score formula to figure out necessary balance on that credit card in order to capture those available points.
Let's say credit limit on the card is $5k and current balance $4.5K this is affecting your score; let's say you have another credit card with $3K credit but balance of $100; score wizard could come back with something like this: transfer $1k from card one to card two and reduce balance on first card to $1800 possible point gain +30 using rapid re-score.
Rapid re-score is yet another service that has been around for a long time. Simply forces your score to re-calculate on demand, this could get pricy depending on number of trade lines and credit agencies that need to be re-scored.

Sorry for a long winded answer.