For as long as most people have shopped for a mortgage, one company's scoring model has quietly decided who qualifies and at what rate: FICO. That's no longer automatically true. In April 2026, the federal regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac confirmed that approved mortgage lenders can now choose a different model — VantageScore 4.0 — for loans they sell to either company, and a third model, FICO 10T, is on its way. If you're shopping for a mortgage this year, here's what's actually changed, what hasn't, and why it might matter to you.
What changed
On April 22, 2026, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Finance Agency jointly announced what they called a "new era of credit score competition" in home lending. The practical effect: mortgage lenders that have been approved for the transition can now choose between the traditional "Classic FICO" score and VantageScore 4.0 when originating a loan intended for sale to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac — the two government-sponsored enterprises that buy the majority of U.S. mortgages from lenders and package them for the secondary market.
This isn't a brand-new idea that appeared overnight. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released historical VantageScore 4.0 data covering roughly a decade of loan acquisitions back in July 2024, effectively laying the groundwork for lenders to start testing the model against real loan performance before using it live. What changed in 2026 is that approved lenders can now actually originate loans using VantageScore 4.0 instead of Classic FICO, not just study how it would have performed retroactively.
A second new model, FICO 10T, is also in the pipeline. Per FHFA's own credit-scores policy page, historical FICO 10T scores are "expected to be published" in the summer of 2026, with full lender adoption still pending at a later, unspecified date. In plain terms: FICO 10T is being prepared the same way VantageScore 4.0 was in 2024 — compiling historical data first — before it becomes something a lender can actually use to originate your loan.
What hasn't changed
It's easy to read "new era of credit score competition" and assume every lender switched overnight. They haven't. FHFA is explicit that this is an interim phase: lenders that haven't been approved for the transition are still required to use Classic FICO, and even among approved lenders, adopting VantageScore 4.0 is a choice, not a mandate. FICO 10T isn't adoptable by any lender yet — the historical-score compilation step that VantageScore went through in 2024 is only now getting underway for FICO's newer model.
The mechanics of how your credit gets pulled also haven't moved. Lenders still request a tri-merge (all three bureaus) or bi-merge credit report the same way they always have; what's changing is which scoring formula gets applied to that underlying bureau data, not how many bureaus get checked or how the report itself is assembled.
Why the two models can produce different numbers for the same person
VantageScore has built its case for adoption around two features Classic FICO doesn't use the same way: trended data (a borrower's payment and balance history over time, not just a single snapshot) and select alternative data, including rental, utility, and telecom payment history where reported. In VantageScore's own published materials, the company claims its model scores 33 million more consumers than traditional credit scores and, in one of its own analyses of mortgages originated between 2013 and 2023 (tracked through Fannie Mae's dataset), predicted "up to 49% more" mortgage defaults leading into the COVID-19 pandemic than Classic FICO did. Those are VantageScore's own competitive claims about its own product — worth knowing as context for why a lender might choose it, but not an independently verified, apples-to-apples comparison, and FICO's own newer models make comparable competitive claims about their own predictive improvements.
The practical upshot for a borrower: if you have a thin credit file — for example, you're a renter with a strong on-time payment history but little traditional credit — a lender using VantageScore 4.0 might generate a usable score where Classic FICO alone would not. If you have an established, longer credit history, the two models may land close to each other, or may not — there's no fixed, universal "point spread" between them, and neither FHFA nor either scoring company has published one.
What this means if you're mortgage shopping in 2026
- Ask your lender which model they use. Because this is a lender-by-lender transition, two lenders quoting you today could be pulling different scores for the identical credit history. That's a legitimate question to ask when you're comparing pre-approval offers.
- Don't assume "the" credit score for a mortgage exists as one number anymore. For years, "your credit score" for mortgage purposes effectively meant one thing. During this transition, it may not.
- A thin file isn't necessarily a dead end. If you've been told you lack enough traditional credit history to qualify, ask whether the lender can evaluate you under VantageScore 4.0's inclusion of rental and utility payment history — it may be worth a second look, though approval still depends on the lender's full underwriting, not the score alone. Our guide to the best credit monitoring services covers how to track both traditional and alternative-data-based scores.
- This doesn't change anything about the rest of your mortgage application. Income verification, debt-to-income ratio, down payment, and the lender's own underwriting standards are unaffected by which score model is used. If you're actively comparing lenders, our roundup of top mortgage lenders for 2026 is a reasonable next stop.
The bigger picture
FHFA describes this as a competition-driving move, and the timeline suggests it's designed to unfold gradually rather than all at once: VantageScore 4.0's historical groundwork took roughly two years (2024 to 2026) to reach live-lender adoption, and FICO 10T is only now entering that same historical-compilation phase. Expect the current mixed landscape — some lenders on Classic FICO, some now eligible to use VantageScore 4.0 — to persist for a while yet, with FICO 10T joining the mix later rather than sooner.
If you're weighing how your personal credit profile affects a business financing application rather than a home loan, that's a different — and often more forgiving — set of underwriting standards than mortgage lending uses; see our guide on fixing credit fast as a small business owner for that context.
This post is educational and does not constitute mortgage, legal, or financial advice. ClearValue Lending is a small business funding platform, not a mortgage lender or a credit-scoring authority, and is not the party that decides which score model any individual mortgage lender adopts. Consult your lender and a qualified mortgage professional for guidance specific to your situation.