I am going through the same thing right now. I have worked for 5 months to raise my credit score up from not having much credit besides student loans. I didn't know that the Experian FICO 8 score is not what mortgage lenders use. I had to lower my student loan payments when I did the IBR at 0 repayment I was told by first lender that he couldn't help me because I don't show enough years of payments. The second one said the amount and balances of my student loans was too high and to consolidate them, and then said with the IBR at 0 he couldn't help me. At this point I was frustrated and just decided to take a break until my student loan consolidation went through. Well in the meantime the rental I'm in sold which meant I had to try and get approved luckily my consolidation came through a couple days later. Third lender was quicken loans, I called for a morgage review and specifically asked the guy not to run my credit without giving him my social I figured I was safe, nope he did a hard hit on my credit. This brings me to the 4th one, I remembered that the company I work for had a partnership with Wells Fargo and offered an employee mortgage program so I called. The girl was very helpful and listened to my whole story. I told her my fico 8 score was 670 my debt was only 2 credit cards with only 300 limit on each plus 66,000 in student loans with a 0 payment through IBR, the house I was interested in was a foreclosure for 65,000, she emailed me all the info on what my amounts would be and I told her we would do preapproval on Tuesday. On Tuesday waiting for her to call I checked my credit score and it dropped 6 points I then realized that mortgage lenders use FICO 2 so I payed the 10 bucks to get it and it was only 614. It showed high utilization on my cards which I paid 1 to 0 and the other kept a 28 balance on now I'm waiting for them to report to credit agencies. I'm so frustrated and don't know what to do at this point. Any advice is so greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening to this long rant.
Thx!