Your credit score affects two separate things: whether you qualify at all, and what you pay if you do. On qualifying, the floors differ by program (confirm current guidelines): - FHA allows scores down to 580 for 3.5% down (500 to 579 means 10% down), though many lenders overlay a 620 minimum. - VA sets no minimum score at all. Any floor you run into is a lender overlay. - Conventional no longer runs on a hard 620 floor for automated approvals; Fannie Mae's system now assesses the full application. The 620 number still governs manual underwrites and survives as a common lender overlay, so in practice most conventional lending starts around there. On pricing, the two loan families behave very differently: - Government loans (FHA, VA, USDA) reach good pricing once you are past about 680, and sit at or near their best around 720-plus. - Conventional loans run on a loan-level price adjustment matrix that charges for almost anything below 780, with the cost stepping up as the score steps down through the 760s, 740s, and lower. The practical effect: around a 680 score, unless you have a large down payment or a lot of equity, FHA often becomes the better deal than conventional. The encouraging part is that most people are doing small things that cost them points without realizing it, and those are usually fixable. A soft-pull review shows which levers matter for your file, and the free Roadmap conversation is where the score turns into your actual rate and payment.