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What does it say about a community when the average credit score of its residents is lower than in other cities across the country?
“It’s really difficult to pinpoint a specific cause or a number of causes,” says Rod Griffin, the director of public education for Experian.
But one thing is clear from a new study by the credit bureau, which calculated the average credit score for more than 200 metropolitan areas in the United States: The residents of cities with lower average credit scores tend to use more of their available credit than cities with higher scores, even if they don’t carry more debt.
Credit utilization is a big factor in credit scores. The more of your available credit you use, the worse it is for your score.
Experian found the nationwide average VantageScore credit score is 673. None of these 10 cities with the lowest credit scores came close to average.
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