With all the drama in the lending industry, you can still get a mortgage with low credit scores. Yes, credit scores are a big determining factor in whether you will get approved for a mortgage, but your credit scores don’t have to be all that great. The mortgage loan I am talking about is a FHA loan. FHA loans are loans that are insured by the government. For years FHA did not have a credit score requirement, and until now they require a minimum of a 300 credit score. This may sound crazy but that is the lowest credit score they will finance with all the new mortgage insurance guidelines. Nether less, typically when you have credit scores that low you have too many recent issues to get a lender to approve you anyways.
There is a market on Wall Street called the secondary market which the buying of mortgage paper takes place. Typically this paper is sold in bulk called mortgage backed securities. The investors that buy this paper may have their own internal restrictions before buying loans. These restrictions might be far stricter than what FHA requires to insure a FHA mortgage loan.
Currently in today’s market there is a minimum credit score requirement of 580. There is also changes going on within banks where they are requiring a middle credit score of 620. The reason for this requirement is because people who have bought homes below that credit score threshold have a history of foreclosing on their homes. So the investors tighten up on what type of FHA mortgage paper they will buy.
Regardless of whether the credit score requirement is 580 or 620, those types of credit scores are still considered low and a high credit risk according the Fair Isaac’s scoring model. So yes you can still currently get a mortgage down to a middle credit score of 580. You will pay higher interest rates with that score, but you will get a 30 yr fixed mortgage.
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