The 620 Line: Credit Before Keys

620 is roughly where conventional mortgage pricing starts to shift meaningfully against you. Below it, the loans available narrow, the rates offered climb, and the total interest cost over the life of the loan can grow large enough to undo the value of the purchase itself. This isn't an arbitrary number — it's the point where the math genuinely changes.

That's why credit priced as high-risk is a protective line for HōMI rather than a small deduction — and why we keep the exact line private, so it can't be gamed. A strong down payment and healthy emergency fund don't offset a credit score that will make the loan itself expensive for the next 15 to 30 years. Building credit first protects you from paying for years to skip a step that takes months to fix.

Credit scores are a proxy for how consistently you've handled debt over time — payment history, utilization, length of history, and the mix of account types. None of that is about whether you're a good or bad person with money. It's a mechanical read on repayment behavior, and mechanical reads can be moved mechanically.

The single largest lever is payment history: on-time payments, consistently, over months. There's no shortcut that replaces this, but there's also no mystery to it. It responds directly and predictably to what you do next.

Utilization — the share of your available credit currently in use — is the second-largest lever, and it moves faster than payment history. Getting revolving balances under 30% of the limit, and ideally under 10%, can move a score meaningfully within one to two billing cycles, far faster than most people expect.

Avoid opening new accounts in the months before applying for a mortgage; each inquiry and each new account temporarily lowers the average age of your credit history, which works against you at exactly the moment you need the opposite. Dispute any reporting errors directly with the credit bureaus — errors are more common than people assume, and they're one of the few fixes that can move a score without requiring months of new behavior.

Meaningful score movement is a three-to-twelve month project, not a weekend one. If you're near the 620 line, treat credit as the first item in your Build First plan, ahead of the down payment itself — a stronger score changes the rate you're offered on whatever loan size you end up with, which changes the total cost more than almost any other single factor.

The goal isn't a perfect score. It's clearing the line by enough margin that the rate you're offered reflects your actual reliability, not a risk premium for a number that hadn't caught up yet.