The short version
You can buy a house with a lot less credit than you've been led to believe. FHA loans go down to a 580 score for the low-down-payment option, and some lenders will work with lower on a strong file. VA and USDA have no hard minimum set by the agency, though most lenders draw a line around 620 to 640. Conventional loans start at 620. The 740-and-up crowd isn't buying access — they're buying a better interest rate.
So there are really two questions hiding inside 'what score do I need.' One is 'what gets me approved,' and the answer is often lower than you'd guess. The other is 'what gets me a good rate,' and that's where the higher scores pay off. Below I'll walk through the actual minimums by program, why the score your lender sees is different from the one on your credit-card app, and the moves that raise a score fastest when you're a few points short of the tier you want.
What's the minimum credit score by loan program?
There's no single number because every loan program sets its own floor, and then the individual lender can layer their own tighter rule on top. That second part trips people up. The FHA program allows 580 for 3.5% down, but plenty of lenders won't touch anything under 620 on an FHA loan — that's the lender's overlay, not FHA's rule. As a broker, I shop your file across lenders specifically to find the one whose overlay doesn't cost you the loan. One bank's 'no' on a 590 score is another lender's 'yes.'
Here's the general lay of the land, and treat these as approximate program floors — your lender's overlay and the rest of your file move the real line. What I want you to take away is that a 620 is a perfectly buyable score, and even the 500s aren't automatically out.
- FHA: 580 for 3.5% down; 500–579 possible with 10% down (harder to place, but real).
- Conventional: 620 minimum, with the best pricing generally kicking in around 740–760.
- VA: no agency minimum, but most lenders want roughly 620–640.
- USDA: no agency minimum, most lenders around 640.
- Jumbo: tightest of the bunch — usually 700+, often 720 or higher.
Why is the score my lender pulls different from the one on my app?
This is the single most common surprise I deal with, and it's worth understanding before you apply. The score you see on your credit-card app, Credit Karma, or your banking app is almost always a consumer score — usually a VantageScore, or a FICO 8 built for general use. Mortgage lenders don't use those. We pull a tri-merge report with three specific, older FICO models: FICO 2 from Experian, FICO 5 from Equifax, and FICO 4 from TransUnion. Different formula, different number.
So you can walk in believing you're a 710 because that's what your phone says, and the mortgage pull comes back 675. It's not an error and nobody's lying to you — it's just a different scoring model built for mortgage risk. The other wrinkle: with three scores across three bureaus, the lender uses your middle score, not the highest or an average. If your three come back 660, 675, and 690, you're a 675 for qualifying. And if there are two borrowers on the loan, most programs use the lower of the two middle scores. Knowing this ahead of time is why I like to pull real mortgage credit early — so we're working off the number that actually counts, not a friendlier one.
- Consumer apps show VantageScore or FICO 8; mortgages use FICO 2/4/5 — a different, usually lower number.
- Lenders take your middle of three bureau scores, not the best or the average.
- On a joint loan, the lower borrower's middle score usually governs the file.
- Pull real mortgage credit early so you plan around the number that qualifies you.
How much does my score actually change my payment?
This is where the score really earns its keep — not on approval, on price. On a conventional loan, your credit score feeds directly into a pricing adjustment. A 780 buyer and a 660 buyer, same house, same down payment, can end up with a meaningfully different rate, and over a 30-year loan that gap is real money. I've seen the spread between credit tiers move a payment by a couple hundred dollars a month on a typical Sonoma County loan size, where a median price runs high enough that small rate differences swing big dollars.
The tiers matter more than the exact number. Going from 719 to 720, or 739 to 740, can bump you into a better pricing bracket, while moving from 742 to 758 might do nothing at all because you're already in the same tier. That's why, when a buyer is sitting at 738, I'll often tell them to hold off two weeks and knock out one specific move to cross 740 — it can be worth more than anything else we do. FHA works a little differently; the score affects approval and the lender's overlay more than the base pricing, but a stronger score still helps. The point stands: on conventional especially, your score isn't just a gate, it's a price tag.
How do I raise my score fast before I buy?
If you're close to a tier line, a few targeted moves can lift a mortgage score faster than most people expect — sometimes within one or two billing cycles. The biggest lever is almost always credit utilization: how much of your available credit you're using. Getting your card balances down under 30% of the limit helps, under 10% helps more, and because the score reads the balance reported on your statement date, paying a card down before that date can move the number in weeks, not months. This is the fastest legitimate lever there is.
Beyond that, the fundamentals: don't miss a payment, because payment history is the heaviest single factor and one late can drop you 50-plus points. Don't close old cards before you buy — it shrinks your available credit and shortens your history, both of which can nick the score. Don't open new accounts or finance a car in the middle of your home search; a new tradeline and a hard pull are the last thing you want mid-application. And if there's an actual error on the report — a paid collection still showing as open, an account that isn't yours — that's worth disputing, because correcting a genuine mistake can jump a score. What I'd steer you away from is paying a 'credit repair' company for things you can do yourself. When a buyer comes to me a little short, we usually build a simple two-to-three-move plan and recheck, and more often than not it gets them where they need to be without paying anyone.
- Pay card balances below 30% — ideally under 10% — before the statement date; this moves fastest.
- Never miss a payment during your home search; a single late can cost 50+ points.
- Don't close old cards or open new credit (including car loans) while you're shopping.
- Dispute genuine report errors; skip paid 'credit repair' for things you can fix yourself.
What if my score isn't there yet — can I still buy in Sonoma County?
Often, yes — and I'd rather have that conversation now than have you sit on the sidelines assuming you're locked out. Sometimes the right answer is a short, focused sprint to cross a tier line, and we map out exactly which moves to make and roughly how long they'll take. Sometimes the score is already fine for FHA and the real work is finding the lender whose overlay accepts it. And sometimes a buyer thinks they're too low when their real mortgage middle score is actually higher than the app on their phone suggested. You don't know which situation you're in until someone pulls the real number.
The reason to run this through a broker rather than one bank: I can see how your specific file prices across multiple lenders and programs, so a 640 that one bank shrugs at might qualify cleanly somewhere else — and I can tell you whether it's worth waiting a month to reach a better rate tier or better to lock in now and refinance later when your score improves. In a market where Sonoma County prices don't leave much room for a bad rate, getting the credit piece right before you shop is one of the highest-return things you can do. Let's pull your real score and build the plan from there.