The 670-715 range is good credit. It means you do what you're supposed to, but maybe was late on a payment once or twice. Above 715 is excellent and you haven't had any missteps. You become eligible for the prime rate. Sub-prime doesn't start until 640-650 because there's still a fair range where people fall in that have a few more serious issues, but not horrible, maybe a more recent late than someone who is in good.
Regardless, a score is just a number and approval isn't dependent on it. I was approved for the PayPal card with a 595 TU8, which is about 100 points below what the expectation is. My last 2 amex were approved with a 625 EX8.
Yeah I think the good "street cred" score is 700, however I'm thinking maybe 715-720+ keeps you out of the woods... all depends on the lender tho, not to mention the file.
Forbes has it right AFAIK, prime / sub-prime / etc are just credit tranches from a product positioning perspective in the financial world.
There's super prime and other tranches too, it's not really something to get caught up on as it doesn't really impact us as consumers other than sorting different products across the spectrum of credit scores.
Anecdotally I agree with others here but different products have different UW requirements and those shift with time. During the happy sunshine world both Amex and Chase were underwriting their cards all the way down to 640 and certainly 680 was totally doable... before that though their premier cards often were 700 or even 720 for things like the CSP back in those days, and by that I mean before early 2013.
It's really starting to tighten up now though, that USBank denial of mine probably wouldn't have happened pre-COVID and I was talking to a Chase mortgage banker the other day and there's a bunch of overlays they have now which is another example of things getting tighter. If you watch the approvals vs. denials on this forum you can get a pretty good idea where UW is for any given product, I just haven't spent much time in those boards in the past few years so can't opine where things are today.
I don't really know what's going to happen when the injected liquidity and forbearance runs out, if there's a massive wave of defaults and bankrupcies I suspect the consumer financial market will look more like 2009-2012: we haven't gotten there yet but that Sword of Damocles is still hanging up there for the banks unfortunately, and that will impact us on the consumer side.
@Anonymous wrote:
@805orbust wrote:Yeah I think the good "street cred" score is 700, however I'm thinking maybe 715-720+ keeps you out of the woods... all depends on the lender tho, not to mention the file.
The best "prime" rate for mortgages is middle score > 740 at the moment.
Maybe someone would call that "super prime."
The other thing, and @805orbust mentions it - your file is what really determines approval. As one of my dear friends who does credit coaching for folks says - "A score will only get you denied. It won't get you approved." It acts like a threshold. Above that threshold, they'll actually look at your file (not counting recons, of course...)
Might even be a higher tier than super prime frankly. It's really irrelevant.
Ultimately I'm having to go through a few additional hoops trying to get my LA condo refinanced even though I can cut a check for it from the assets on file with the bank I'm getting it through and my mid score is 770. Scores mean very little except to get you over the cutoff for any given product, and to a lesser extent what rate you get offered... but actually getting approved, that's something else entirely to your point.
Ultimately my personal opinion is until you can get 740+ or even 760+ (PMI rates) on a mortgage pull there's money left on the table and as such it's worth getting to that point.