Do lenders take available credit into consideration?

[Jazmine S.]

I am trying to decide if it's a good investment to purchase an AU or two before I apply for funding. (I'm going either the HML or Portfolio route). If they look at income, liquid assets, and debt to income, would available credit from revolving lines of credit be taken into consideration too? (If Authorized Users only).

Fyi, liquid assets and debt to income are both good, income is mediocre, and I have one low-limit credit card, no delinquencies.

[Dan Mahoney]

@Jazmine S. I don't think anyone has actually answered your question about AU tradelines.  I'm not sure folks here understand what you are trying to do.  For everyone else's benefit, Jazmine is talking about subscribing to a service that will "rent" you an Authorized User account on a stranger's credit card for the purposes of improving your own credit report.  

The answer to your question has 3 parts.

1) Adding an AU tradeline will help your credit score under most scoring models, including FICO 8, if it is seasoned (i.e., increases your average account age), has a perfect payment history, and has a zero or very low balance (i.e., reduces your revolving debt as a % of available credit).  I would be wary of purchasing AUs, as FICO is actively trying to reduce the benefit of that practice.  Quoting from MyFico.com:

2) Adding AU tradelines will only benefit you if your lender is basing decisions off a credit scoring model, as they do for conventional mortgages. HML and portfolio lenders are much more likely to use a manual review, and will rely less (and possibly not at all) on AU tradelines for assessing creditworthiness. From what you describe, you have a pretty thin credit file whether or not you add a couple AUs.

3) Lastly, you state that the lender looks at income, liquid assets and debt to income.  An AU tradeline will not impact any of these metrics.  Available credit only factors into credit utilization.