There is no single magic number. The official floors are lower than most people think, and the thresholds that matter in practice come from automated underwriting and pricing tiers. Think in terms of trajectory as much as any score. Someone climbing from 575 to 650 is in a stronger spot than someone sliding from 700 to 675, and underwriting notices the direction. By loan type (confirm current guidelines, since these move): - FHA and VA. FHA's own floors are 500, or 580 for the standard low down payment, and VA has no minimum score at all. There is no true 640 cutoff, and the automated systems can approve below it. In practice, though, an automated approval gets much harder to find below roughly 640, and 640 is a common lender overlay (it is also USDA's benchmark). Above about 680 you reach the best pricing tier, with only marginal gains beyond that. - Conventional. The old flat 620 minimum is best understood today as a manual-underwrite and lender-overlay number: Fannie Mae's automated system dropped it in late 2025 in favor of assessing the whole file, though plenty of lenders still hold the 620 line in practice. Pricing improves in roughly 20-point steps (620, 640, 660, 680) up to 740, where it tops out. A standard Fannie or Freddie loan pays you nothing extra for an 820 over a 740. - DSCR, non-QM, and jumbo. Different animal. Those lenders pool and sell loans on a weighted-average score, so they often keep rewarding higher scores up to around 800, because they want quality throughout the pool. The bigger question is whether it is the right time in your life to buy, since a score can be built and a market cannot be timed. If you want to see exactly where your score puts you and what to shore up first, the free Roadmap conversation (about 20 minutes) lays it out.