There is no single mortgage credit score minimum. There are programme floors, and then there are lender overlays sitting on top of them.
The programme floors
| Programme | Floor | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Conventional (Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac) | 620 | the number most people mean by "the mortgage minimum" |
| FHA, 3.5% down | 580 | |
| FHA, 10% down | 500 | the larger deposit is what buys the lower score |
| VA | none in the programme | lenders impose their own, commonly 580–620 |
| USDA | none in the programme | lenders commonly want 640 |
The VA and USDA rows matter more than they look. The programmes genuinely set no minimum — but you do not borrow from the programme, you borrow from a lender, and every lender sets its own floor above it. That floor is called an overlay, and it varies between lenders on the same day for the same borrower.
Which is why the same application can be declined at one lender and approved at the next with no change to the file.
The middle-of-three rule
A mortgage lender pulls all three bureaux and receives three scores, generally from the older FICO 2, 4 and 5 models. It uses the middle one — not the average, not the highest.
So 640, 655 and 690 is a 655 file. Improving the highest score does nothing; improving the lowest does nothing until it passes the middle. The one worth working on is whichever bureau sits in the middle, and the one below it.
For joint applications, most lenders take each borrower's middle score and then use the lower of the two. A strong co-borrower does not average out a weak one.
Why the app score misleads here
Free scores in banking apps are usually FICO 8 or VantageScore 3.0. Mortgage lending uses models roughly two decades older, which handle collections, authorised-user accounts and some medical debt differently.
The mortgage number is frequently lower than the app number, sometimes by 20 to 40 points. A borrower at 640 in their app may be a 615 mortgage file, and 615 is on the wrong side of the conventional floor.
This is worth knowing before making an offer rather than after.
What the score is actually buying
Above the floor, the score sets the price, and it steps rather than slopes. Conventional pricing adjusts in bands — commonly 640, 660, 680, 700, 720, 740 and 760 — so nineteen points of improvement may be worth nothing and the twentieth worth a quarter of a percentage point.
On a $400,000 loan, a quarter point is roughly $60 a month, and about $22,000 over thirty years. Which is why finding out how far you are from the next band is a more useful question than "is my score good".
Above 760 it stops mattering
Conventional pricing generally reaches its best tier around 740 to 760. Above that, more score buys nothing on a mortgage.
A borrower at 810 and one at 765 are usually offered the same rate. If a lender advertises a rate "for excellent credit", that is the band it means.
What sits alongside the score
The score is one of several gates, and it is not usually the binding one:
- Debt-to-income ratio. Conventional loans commonly cap around 45%, sometimes to 50% with compensating factors. This declines more applications than credit score does.
- Deposit. It changes the loan-to-value ratio, which is priced separately and often more heavily.
- Employment history. Two years in the same line of work is the usual expectation; self-employment normally needs two years of returns.
- Reserves. Months of payments in savings after closing, which can offset a weaker score.
A 620 file with 20% down, low debt and six months of reserves is a more comfortable approval than a 720 file with 3% down and a 47% debt ratio.
If you are close to a band
Two things move a score within one or two cycles, and neither requires new credit.
Pay balances down before the statement date. Utilisation recalculates on reporting, so the balance shown is the statement balance, not what you owe today.
Check your reports for errors. A closed account still showing a balance, an account that is not yours, or a wrong late payment can be disputed, and corrections can land within 30 days.
What does not work is opening a new card to raise total limits. The hard enquiry and the new account both cut the wrong way in the short term, and mortgage underwriters look at new credit opened during the application unfavourably.