Mortgage applicants in Hawaii had the fourth-highest average credit score of any state last year, according to a study published Friday by Mortgage Marvel, a loan information website.
The report was the second this week that portrayed Hawaii residents as being above average in their ability to repay debt.
NOT SO MARVELOUS
Bottom five states:
| Oklahoma |
701 |
| Louisiana |
698 |
| West Virginia |
697 |
| Arkansas |
691 |
| Mississippi |
686 |
|
Hawaii mortgage applicants who submitted their applications online had an average credit score of 748 in 2011, according to Mequon, Wis.-based Mortgage Marvel. That was 18 points above the national average and 62 above the lowest-scoring state, Mississippi. Ranked ahead of Hawaii were California at 754, Oregon at 750 and Wisconsin at 749. The national average credit score was 730 in 2011. A perfect credit score is 800.
Mortgage Marvel analyzed data from 330,000 mortgage applications for the study.
Hawaii also ranked near the top in a separate survey released this week by Credit Karma, a company that offers free credit scores and scoring information. Credit Karma said the average credit score in Hawaii last month was 673, the sixth highest of any state. Hawaii scored well despite having the second-highest amount of credit card debt, averaging $7,457 per person.
Rich Allen, chief operating officer of Mortgage Marvel, said it’s difficult to assess why some states score better than others in the credit rankings.
While there seems to be some correlation between higher income levels and ability to repay debt, other indicators, like mortgage foreclosures and unemployment levels, provide mixed signals. For example, Hawaii, with one of the lowest jobless rates in the country and lower-than-average number of foreclosures, had a relatively high credit score. But California, which has among the highest unemployment and foreclosure rates, garnered the highest score in the credit survey.
Allen also said that the results of the study are to some degree “self-selecting” because it included only people who were applying for mortgages and not the broader population.
Mortgage Marvel is an online mortgage-shopping website that provides quotes from multiple lenders. Mortgage Marvel is operated by Mortgagebot, which designs and manages online loan application platforms for banks and other lenders.
