American credit scores suffer most in Chicago, Detroit and Baton Rouge, according to leading personal finance website
Mountain View, Calif. – Credit Sesame, the leading consumer credit and personal finance company, has released an in-depth report about the state of America’s credit. The analysis, extracted from a subset of Credit Sesame’s seven million members at the end of 2015, looks at where people have the best credit scores and reviews how “maxed out” consumers are when it comes to credit cards.
“We learned that ZIP codes in Silicon Valley, New York City and Seattle rank highest, while parts of Chicago, Detroit and Baton Rouge ranked among the bottom,” says Adrian Nazari, Founder and CEO of Credit Sesame. “We also uncovered a strong correlation between consumer income and credit scores, which is in contrast to what many credit bureaus report.”
Select report results include:
- Maxed out: More than half of Americans are using 70% or more of their maximum credit.
- Scoring higher: Homeowners have higher credit scores than renters; homeowners with an average credit score of 661 and renters with 583 – a 78-point difference.
- Chicago and inequality: The largest discrepancy in average credit scores is seen in Chicago, where the city’s Lake View and Lincoln Park neighborhoods scored 707 and 705, respectively, while the neighborhoods to the south, Englewood and West Englewood, shared an average score of 534.
- Poverty and low scores: Some of the lowest credit scores are in ZIP codes where household income is less than half the national average and where more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line.
Click here for Credit Sesame’s full “United States of Credit: A Look at the Credit Health of American Consumers” report.
About Credit Sesame
Credit Sesame is a free personal finance service helping people effectively manage their credit and loans. As a strong consumer advocate, we give our users the free tools they need to make smarter financial decisions – 100% free credit score, report card, credit monitoring and bank-level analytics. Our users are empowered to take control of their credit and loans to better achieve their financial goals with minimal effort and maximum impact.
