VantageScore 4.0 can create more homebuyers. Now America needs more homes.

A credit score should tell lenders not just where a borrower is, but where that borrower is headed. For example, consider two mortgage applicants who each carry a $5,000 revolving balance today. One paid that balance down from $15,000. The other ran it up from $500. Their current balances are identical, but their trajectory plainly is not. For decades, mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac relied almost exclusively on a scoring model built largely around a single point-in-time view of credit. That is changing. FHFA approved VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T for use by the GSEs in 2022, and in July 2025 announced the interim transition policy allowing VantageScore 4.0 to be used for Enterprise loans. After a limited rollout this spring and summer, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac opened VantageScore 4.0 to every approved lender in September. The change arrives in a market that remains stubbornly out of reach for many Americans. Rates are well above where they were last decade, prices are near record highs in many markets and inventories are tight. VantageScore 4.0 can help lenders identify creditworthy borrowers who were previously overlooked. But more qualified buyers are only half th...