Cancel cards or keep?

I’m trying to decide whether to close several credit rebuilding cards that have extremely high fees, and I’m looking for advice from people who understand how this might affect my mortgage credit profile.

Here’s my situation:

I rebuilt my credit over the last few years using subprime cards. Now my credit profile has improved and I have several stronger accounts including a Navy Federal AMEX rewards card/Platinum, USAA Platinum and a Military STAR card. My payment history on these accounts are perfect for about 8-10 years.

The problem is the older rebuilding cards I opened earlier in the process. The ones I’m considering closing are:

• FIT (Bank of Missouri / Continental Finance)

• REVVI

• First Premier

The fees on these cards are outrageous. For example the FIT card alone charges a $125 annual fee plus $15 per month. Between all three cards I’m paying about $807 per year just in mandatory fees, even though I don’t use them. The interest is like 36%.

All three cards currently have $0 balances.

Two of these companies are also extremely aggressive about late fees. One of them charges $41 if you’re even one day late, which makes me nervous because a 30-day late payment would be far worse than closing the account.

My goal is to buy a home soon. My timeline looks like this:

• Mortgage pre-qualification in 60–90 days

• Actual home purchase / closing in ~5–6 months

If I close these cards my overall utilization would still stay under 10% because my other cards have higher limits.

So my dilemma is:

Option 1: Keep them open and basically pay $807/year just to keep the accounts reporting positive history until after I close on a house.

Option 2: Close them now since they’re expensive and risky, especially because I already have better accounts reporting.

I know lenders like stability before a mortgage application, so I’m trying to figure out whether closing them now would hurt my credit profile more than keeping them.

For anyone who understands credit scoring or mortgage underwriting:

Would you close these cards now, or keep them open until after closing on the house?