What is the amount of the mortgage you are considering? Because, I don't think it is just a matter of a good FICO score. It is a matter of the size of the loan. I believe that if it is over the conventional loan limits, you might have a hard time getting a conventional at 5%. In our case, we technically qualififed for over $700K (I say "technically, because our income and scores would support a mortgage higher than the FHA limit for our area), and all of our scores were above 800. The FHA limit in our area was $697, and we were looking at houses in the $620K to $640K range, and nobody would give us a 5% conventional. I checked 2 major banks (1 with which we bank), 1 credit union (belonged to for 15 years), and a mortgage broker. All said the same thing... since the mortgage was going to be high (I believe over $417K - and someone can correct me here), we'd need to put down 10% for a conventional.
