Which score do lenders use for mortgages? I pulled all three: Transunion, Equifax and Experian. All scores are eligible for a mortgage (I heard 620 is the minimum needed for conventional and I am much higher than that) but there are small differences in each. I was wondering which is used so that I can get a good guess at what our interest rate is going to be. I also heard that what you pull from the 3 bureaus may not be what the banks see at all. Are those scores majorly different? or just minute changes.
Well, each bank has their own proceedures, and agreements with various reporting agencies, so which company's report used will vary from bank to bank. Depending on where you recieved your report from, it's likely to be an approximation of your FICO score, and not likely to vary much.
Most lenders use the actual FICO score. (the faux scores each of the three agencies produce is often cynically called a "FAKO" score, as most lenders don't actually use them.) The FAKO can vary from the FICO by as much as 70-80 points in my experience. You can purchase the actual FICO scores from the MyFico website, but Experian doesn't participate in allowing consumer access, so you have no way of knowing what your Experian FICO is unless a lender requests it and tells you. When applying for a mortgage, lenders generally pull all three FICO scores and then either average them or take the lowest of the three.
