A survey often cited in the mortgage industry found that most buyers think they need near perfect credit to get the best rate. Two government and industry data sources say otherwise. This page keeps them separate on purpose, because they use two different credit scales that do not line up point for point.
Part 1: the fee gap, FICO style bands
Freddie Mac’s Exhibit 19 base grid, Bulletin 2026-09, effective 07/01/2026, prices a $320,000 loan at 20% down like this, by FICO style score band:
| Score band | Fee |
|---|---|
| 780+ | $1,200 |
| 760-779 | $2,000 |
| 740-759 | $2,800 |
| 720-739 | $4,000 |
| 700-719 | $4,400 |
| 680-699 | $5,600 |
| 660-679 | $6,000 |
| 640-659 | $7,200 |
| Under 640 | $8,800 |
Two comparisons matter here. Climbing from 740 to 780+, the last stretch toward a perfect score, saves $2,800 minus $1,200, or $1,600. Climbing from 660 to 740, moving out of fair credit into good credit, saves $6,000 minus $2,800, or $3,200, exactly double the first climb. The grid also stops rewarding you at 780. A score of 800, 820, or 850 pays the same $1,200 fee as a 780 on this grid. There is no extra credit for going past it.
This fee is not your rate. On this page’s own $320,000 loan example at 6.5% with 1 point, the monthly principal and interest payment is about $2,023. An illustrative APR for that same rate, assuming $3,000 in lender fees and 1 point, comes out to roughly 6.69%. The LLPA fee above is a separate charge from the loan buyer to the lender, and the lender decides how to work it into your rate or your costs.
Part 2: where 2024 borrowers actually landed, VantageScore bands
This second dataset comes from FHFA’s National Mortgage Database and uses a different scale, VantageScore, grouped into its own bands: Very Poor, Poor, Fair, Good, and Excellent. FICO and VantageScore both run 300 to 850, but they score the same person differently, so a FICO 740 and a VantageScore Good band are not guaranteed to be the same borrower. Do not read Part 1 and Part 2 as the same number line.
Share of 2024 mortgage originations by VantageScore band, weighted by loan count and by dollar volume:
| VantageScore band | Share by loan count | Share by dollar volume |
|---|---|---|
| Very Poor | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| Poor | 3.7% | 2.5% |
| Fair | 12.2% | 9.6% |
| Good | 54.8% | 53.4% |
| Excellent | 29.1% | 34.4% |
The average VantageScore among 2024 originations was 733.6 by loan count and 744.0 by dollar volume. Only 29.1% of 2024 borrowers sat in the Excellent band by loan count. The exact score cutoff where Excellent begins is defined in FHFA’s own technical notes, which this page has not verified line by line, so this page does not state a precise number for it. What the data does support directly: most people who got a mortgage in 2024 were not at the top of the credit scale, by either measure.
What the grid and the data do not say
- The LLPA table in Part 1 does not apply to FHA, VA, or USDA loans, which use their own fee structures.
- The LLPA fee is not itself a rate, and it is not what any single lender will quote you. Lenders price it into your rate or costs differently.
- NMDB’s VantageScore bands cover a sample of all closed end first lien loans, not only conventional loans priced on the Freddie Mac grid, so Part 1 and Part 2 describe overlapping but not identical groups of borrowers.
- This grid is effective 07/01/2026 under Bulletin 2026-09 and will change over time. Check the source for the current version.
What this means for you
Your score still matters. Moving up a band lowers your fee, and a very low score narrows which loans you qualify for at all. But the payoff shrinks the closer you get to the top, and the Freddie Mac grid used here gives nothing extra past 780. If you are deciding whether to spend six more months raising a 780 to an 800, or use that time and effort elsewhere, the pricing grid says the fee will not move. On this page’s own example loan, held the full 30 years, total interest, points, and fees come to about $411,342. That is the scale worth weighing against a fee difference of $1,200 to $1,600 between neighboring score bands.