How Does My Credit Score Affect My Mortgage Payment?

Your credit score can make a big difference in how much home you can afford and how much interest you'll end up paying.

As an example, if you're obtaining a $250,000 mortgage and have a FICO score of 760, you can expect to pay $145,698 in interest over the term of a 30-year mortgage as of this writing. On the other hand, with a score of 635, you can expect to pay $228,365 in interest. This would cost you $82,667‬ more interest over the life of the loan!

You can get a free estimation of your credit scores from two bureaus over at CreditKarma.com. You can get your free credit report (without FICO scores) from AnnualCreditReport.com.

Credit boosting services that ask you to report utility bills and other monthly obligations will not impact your debt-to-income ratio. Therefore, you may explore credit boosting as an option but be sure to remember that we take all three credit bureaus to determine your decision score (generally an average of all three or the middle score depending on the loan program).