The number most buyers are hunting for is 620. That’s the floor for a conventional mortgage backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and it’s the figure quoted in nearly every article on the subject. It’s also only half the story.
Picture two borrowers. The first has a 620 score, 3% down, and a debt-to-income ratio of 41%. The second has a 665 score and a DTI of 58%. The first one gets approved. The second doesn’t, no matter how many points separate them. Your score is a gate you have to pass, not a guarantee that you’ll walk through it.
The minimum credit score by loan type
There is no single national minimum, because each loan program sets its own floor and each lender layers its own rules on top. Here’s how the major programs stack up:
- Conventional (Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac): 620 is the published minimum. First-time buyers can put down as little as 3% through programs like HomeReady and Home Possible, though most lenders quietly require 640 to reduce their own risk.
- FHA: 580 gets you in with 3.5% down. Between 500 and 579, you need 10% down. Below 500, FHA won’t insure the loan at all.
- VA: The VA itself doesn’t publish a minimum score. In practice most VA lenders want 580 to 620, and a few go lower with strong compensating factors.
- USDA: 640 for an automated approval through the Guaranteed Underwriting System. Manual underwriting can stretch below that if you can document compensating factors, but it’s a slower, fussier process.
- Jumbo: No government backing, so no floor. Most banks want 700 to 740. Portfolio lenders who keep the loan on their own books sometimes go to 660 with a large down payment.
Notice how wide that spread is: 500 at the bottom, 740 at the top. The phrase “minimum credit score to buy a house” really means “minimum for the specific loan you’re trying to get.”
Why the advertised minimum and the real minimum differ
Lenders call their extra rules “overlays.” They exist because a bank can sell a Fannie Mae loan at 620 but still lose money on the ones that go bad, so it sets a higher bar than the agency requires. A lender advertising a 640 minimum for conventional loans isn’t being deceptive. It’s just pricing its own risk.
The other moving part is automated underwriting. Fannie’s Desktop Underwriter and Freddie’s Loan Product Advisor don’t just look at your score in isolation. They weigh it against reserves, down payment, and payment history. A 640 with twelve months of reserves and a clean rental history can come back Approve/Eligible. A 700 with three recent 30-day lates and no savings often comes back Refer. The score opens the door; the whole file decides whether you get to stay.
One technical detail worth knowing before you shop: mortgage lenders use the middle of your three FICO scores, not the highest or the average. If your scores are 612, 648, and 671, you’re a 648. On a joint application, they use the lower of the two borrowers’ middle scores.
What each score band actually costs you
The minimum score gets you approved. It doesn’t get you a good deal. Fannie and Freddie charge loan-level price adjustments, which are fees based on your score and down payment, and lenders convert those fees into either cash at closing or a higher interest rate.
Take a $320,000 loan with 5% down. A borrower at 760 might land a 6.50% rate. A borrower at 620 on the same loan typically pays an adjustment of roughly 1.25% of the loan amount plus a rate closer to 7.25%. That’s about $160 more per month, or roughly $57,000 extra across 30 years, for the same house. If you land in that band, it’s worth reading what a 620 credit score actually qualifies you for and what it really costs before you sign anything.
Score bands, roughly
760 and above gets the cleanest pricing. The 740s add a small adjustment. The 700 to 739 range is still solid. Between 680 and 699, costs climb noticeably. From 640 to 679, you’re looking at real money each month. And 620 to 639 is the most expensive conventional tier there is. FHA is less score-sensitive on pricing, but it charges mortgage insurance: 1.75% upfront and roughly 0.55% annually, which is its own form of cost.
Your score is one input, not the decision
Plenty of people with 700-plus scores get turned down, and the reason is almost always something other than credit. Debt-to-income ratio is the big one. Conventional loans generally cap out around 45%, with automated approval pushing to 50% in strong files. FHA will go to 57% with an automated approval. If your minimum payments eat up half your gross income, a great score won’t rescue the application.
Revolving debt is a sneaky culprit here. A $15,000 balance on a card at 24% carries a minimum payment near $375, and that number feeds straight into your DTI even if you pay it off monthly. Lenders weigh more than the balance, though, and the way they read high credit card debt when you’re buying a house is often more forgiving than borrowers expect, especially if you can document that you’re paying it down.
Reserves matter too. Two to six months of mortgage payments in savings tells an underwriter you can absorb a surprise, and that’s exactly the kind of compensating factor that pushes a borderline file into an approval.
How to add 20 to 40 points before you apply
A few months of deliberate behavior can move the needle further than most people realise. In order of impact:
- Pay revolving balances down before the statement closing date, not the due date. Utilization is reported from the statement balance, so a card showing 8% at closing reports as 8% even if you carry more mid-month.
- Get overall utilization under 10%. The old 30% rule of thumb is far too generous for mortgage scoring.
- Leave old accounts open, even the ones you never use. Average account age and total available credit both count.
- Dispute genuine errors on all three reports. Mortgage scoring is unforgiving about a collection that isn’t yours.
- Ask your loan officer about a rapid rescore. Once you’ve paid something off, the lender can request an updated score through its credit vendor, usually within three to five business days.
- Avoid new credit cards, car loans, or financed furniture in the six months before you apply.
If your file has damage, or no file at all
Not everyone walks in with a tidy history. Late payments hit hardest in the first 24 months and fade after that, though an underwriter will still ask for a written explanation of anything recent. A single 30-day late from 2021 and a string of them through last winter are completely different problems, and what lenders actually see with late payments depends heavily on the pattern rather than the count. Collections and charge-offs are their own category, with rules about whether they need to be paid before closing that vary by loan type and by lender.
And some buyers have no score at all. A thin or blank credit file is not an automatic denial. Non-traditional tradelines, rent reporting, and manual underwriting can carry a file that an algorithm would otherwise reject. There’s a real path through it, and it’s covered in detail in buying a house with no credit history.
Getting a real answer instead of a guess
Every number in this article is an industry baseline, not a promise about your file. The only reliable way to know where you stand is to have a loan officer pull your middle scores and run the file through automated underwriting. That’s a soft inquiry and shouldn’t cost you anything.
Three questions worth asking on that call. Which score model are you using? What overlays does your company apply above the agency minimums? And what single change would move my file from borderline to approved? A good broker will answer all three in plain language. If they can’t, or if they quote you a rate before they’ve seen your DTI and reserves, call someone else. The minimum credit score is the easy part of the puzzle. The rest of your file is what actually buys the house.