Forgiveness itself should not hurt you. The real question is how your payment gets counted while the loans are still on your report. On the credit side: when federal forgiveness comes through, the balance is wiped and the account should report as satisfied, with no negative mark for being forgiven. The qualifying side is where program choice matters, especially when your credit report shows a $0 or deferred payment: - Conventional through Fannie Mae: the payment on the credit report is used, and a documented $0 income-driven payment can genuinely count as $0. A loan in deferment or forbearance gets counted at 1% of the balance, or a documented fully amortizing payment. - Freddie Mac and FHA: neither accepts a true $0. When the report shows $0, they use 0.5% of the outstanding balance unless documentation supports an actual payment. - VA: a loan documented as deferred for more than 12 months can be excluded; otherwise VA applies a threshold test based on the balance. - USDA: 0.5% of the balance, or a documented fixed payment. So the documented-$0 strategy is a conventional play, and the same borrower can qualify for meaningfully different amounts across programs. Until forgiveness actually occurs, planning around it is an educated guess, and we qualify you on the payment rules as they stand today. If student loans are shaping how much you qualify for, we can walk through exactly how your servicer's numbers translate into a mortgage payment in the free Roadmap conversation, where we run your real numbers.