6 month no apping rule...?

[cwwatts1202]

My husbands score is going to be where we need it to be to qualify for the loan we're trying to get a lot sooner than we expected. We thought we'd have his score there by november/december and apply then, and not app for any new credit after July. Well it looks like his score is going to be where it needs to be by september probably. He has 5 inq's since Jan/Feb of this year, 2 of them being for utilities (sprint cell service and verizon fios approved for both no deposit if it matters) with the most recent one being last week for fios. We will be applying for a usda direct loan. I've been speaking with the lady who handles all the credit type issues for the company we're going through that builds homes under the usda loans and she knew we would be applying for CC's to build my husbands score, but also didnt know his score would be 640 as quick as it will. Will it hurt anything if we have app'd for credit 4 months before app'ing for this loan? And how do mortgage lenders look at HP's for utilities? I know they say not to have tons of inq's bc it looks like you're desperate for credit, but 2 of the 5 are for utilities and the other 3 are for CC's we were told to app for to build credit score to qualify for the loan... 

[Genkeim]

I had a handful of HPs on my report, I just needed to provide an explination for what each was for. 

[tooleman694]

If your score is borderline it is not a good idea to app. but if you have room in your score to take a hit from a new CC then its cool.

[cwwatts1202]

We're not app'ing for anything else before the loan, just wanted to make sure the 5 Hp's he has on his report are ok and won't mess anything up.

[tooleman694]

I had like 60 inqs on my report, and they were not even questioned.