I think it's a combination of all of those things that help.Something you might try is to go to a site like Credit Karma where they have a Credit Score Simulator that will allow you to pick from a variety of possible options (i.e. close an account, open an account, increase or decrease your balances or credit limits, etc) and see how the changes might affect your overall credit score. 

I've been crunching numbers for a while and actually used my methods for picking out a first home (for the numbers minded folks - normal investor metrics followed by cash flow analysis... for the nerdier folks out there - followed the cash flow analysis with a monte carlo simulation of the market/cash flow parameters). 

James Cloman credit karma has a simulator tool, you can make some adjustments and see how it affects your score.

I am reffering to the real time options trading simulation I did last semester where I made 380K out of a 100K investment in 6 weeks. 

Land trusts have several possible objectives, typically to simulate a lease-option in TX (lease options are effectively dead in TX since early 2000s), to avoid due-on-sale issues of a subject-to transaction, or to provide anonymity to the owner.

My grandfather owned a small apartment building and I am interested in following in his footsteps and creating something of my own here in the Pacific Northwest, although I intend to start small with 2-4 bed single-family houses and condos.Currently, I am using theMLSonline to look at various properties in the Greater Seattle Area and simulating whether they could cash-flow based on the 50% rule and some guesses at costs to update and repair. 

Be wary of buying these returned ones at lowes as they are often ones with problems that the employees cannot simulate in store. 

Some of the credit report services also have a simulator that recommends what to do to raise your credit score and/or shows how the score would likely change under different situations.

@Jovon English there was a experiment donePeople had a simulation of five years of investing and got to choose between two fundsThen each person got to decide how often they got information and how to act on itThose who got information every few months on how the fund was doing and received news about it did substantially worse than those who got information once a year or more.Find a company, trust management and don’t look back.

. - available for 1-4 unit properties so great for house hacks on fourplexes, duplexes, and triplexes- 10 year interest only (120 months)- years 11 through 30 its still variable interest payment + 1/240th of your principal balance paid monthly- rate is libor 1 Month + Margin (usually 3.75% fixed through out life of the loan)- purchase/cashout/refi up to 80% depending on loan amounts but it can go up to 2,000,000 max at lower LTV's as high as 70% LTV for primary and second homes- some of the All in ONE loan products (many different AIO investors) can go to 90% on 1 unit primary residence with limiting credit, income, and other factors- anyone who wants to enter their loan into a simulation against their current mortgage can go to www.aioloan.net Hope that helps.