We covered this as a coming overhaul back in March. It’s not coming anymore. On September 9, 2026, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac removed the prior-written-approval requirement for VantageScore 4.0, which means every lender approved to sell loans to the GSEs can now pull it. No special sign-off. No pilot program waitlist. Just a checkbox on which model to use.

FICO 10T, the other model FHFA promised, is still on the bench. And FHA just locked in a real date for its own version of this switch: January 1, 2027. If you’re shopping for a mortgage right now, with 30-year rates hovering around 7.225% as of September 22, which score your lender pulls isn’t trivia anymore. It’s the difference between a rate you can live with and one that stings.

Here’s what actually changed, why FICO’s version stalled, and what to do about it before you sign anything.

Where Things Stand: September 2026

Model	GSE Conventional Loans	FHA Loans
Classic FICO	Still the default, every lender	Still accepted
VantageScore 4.0	Open to all approved lenders as of Sept. 9, 2026	Starts Jan. 1, 2027
FICO 10T	Not eligible for delivery, no date set	Starts Jan. 1, 2027

Model eligibility per FHFA and FICO’s investor announcement. Verify current requirements with your lender before applying.

What Actually Changed on September 9

Before this month, VantageScore 4.0 was available to lenders on a limited basis: a pilot that started in April 2026, and only for lenders who’d gotten specific written sign-off from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Most loan officers you’d talk to had never touched it.

That gate is gone. Fannie Mae’s Lender Letter LL-2026-06 and Freddie Mac’s parallel Guide Bulletin 2026-H, both effective September 9, let any approved lender originate and deliver loans using VantageScore 4.0 instead of Classic FICO. No pre-approval process. A lender decides to flip the switch, and they can.

A few rules still apply. Lenders have to pick one model per loan. You can’t have one borrower scored on Classic FICO and a co-borrower on VantageScore 4.0 on the same application. Manual underwriting still runs on Classic FICO only. And per HousingWire’s reporting on the rollout, adoption so far is lopsided: VantageScore 4.0 made up about 5.6% of total GSE loan volume in August, and nearly all of it came from two lenders, Rocket Mortgage and United Wholesale Mortgage. September 9 opens the door for everyone else. It doesn’t mean everyone else is walking through it yet.

Ask your loan officer directly which model they’re pulling. Don’t assume. A lender can be “approved” to use VantageScore 4.0 and still default to Classic FICO because that’s what their underwriting software is set up for.

Why FICO 10T Is Still Stuck

This is the part that’s gotten weird. FHFA promised both models would eventually be required, not just VantageScore. FICO 10T isn’t eligible for GSE loan delivery, full stop, and there’s no announced date for when that changes.

The holdup looks like pricing, not technology. FHFA Director Bill Pulte has been blunt about it, telling reporters (per HousingWire) that “FICO is not interested in offering competitive costs but instead uses various means to increase price,” and that “one company cannot hold the market hostage.” FICO hasn’t responded publicly to that characterization. What’s clear is that the GSEs published historical FICO 10T score data back in July so lenders could study it, then moved forward with VantageScore alone in September. That’s not an accident. It’s leverage.

If you’re a mortgage shopper, the practical takeaway is simple: FICO 10T isn’t something you or your lender can use for a conventional loan today, regardless of how good your trended payment history looks under that model. VantageScore 4.0 is the only “new generation” score actually in play right now.

The Rent and Trended Data Piece, Quickly

VantageScore 4.0 does something Classic FICO never has: it factors in rental payment history (when it’s reported to the bureaus) and trended data, meaning how your balances and payments moved over the past 24 months, not just where they sit today. Someone paying down a credit card consistently looks different to VantageScore 4.0 than someone whose balance just happens to be low this month. We went deep on how that scoring actually works, who it helps, and who it doesn’t in the full FICO 10T and VantageScore 4.0 breakdown, worth reading if you haven’t gotten your rent payments reported yet, because that’s still the highest-leverage move available to thin-file borrowers.

One clarification, because we’ve written about this before and don’t want to contradict ourselves: the VantageScore your Credit Karma app shows you is VantageScore 3.0, the free consumer version. It’s not the same model as VantageScore 4.0 that lenders are now using for mortgages. Different generation, different inputs, and (per our credit monitoring apps guide) still not something most free apps show you directly. If you want to see something closer to what a lender will pull, you need a mortgage-specific product, not your bank’s free score widget.

The Price War Nobody Asked For, But Everyone’s Getting

Here’s the part that explains a lot of the lender enthusiasm for VantageScore 4.0: it’s dramatically cheaper. TransUnion announced in March that it would charge lenders 99 cents per VantageScore 4.0 pull, against FICO’s roughly $10 per score. TransUnion’s own estimate puts the potential savings for lenders and consumers combined at more than $900 million.

That gap is enormous. Ten dollars versus under a dollar, per score, times every conventional mortgage application in the country. Lenders pass credit report costs to borrowers in some form eventually, whether through fees or built into pricing. A pricing difference that large doesn’t stay abstract for long. It’s a direct incentive for lenders to push VantageScore 4.0 adoption, separate from whatever the model tells them about a borrower’s actual risk.

Worth sitting with that for a second. The score your mortgage gets priced on might increasingly be chosen partly because it’s cheaper for the bank, not because it’s more accurate for you. Both things can be true. Neither cancels the other out.

FHA’s January 1, 2027 Date Is Now Real

Up until recently, FHA’s timeline for adopting the new scoring models was vague. That changed. FHA-approved lenders can start using VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T for case numbers assigned on or after January 1, 2027, alongside Classic FICO, which isn’t going away.

A few things worth knowing if you’re headed toward an FHA loan instead of a conventional one:

• FHA is rolling this out to every approved lender simultaneously, unlike the GSE rollout, which happened in stages.
• Classic FICO sticks around. FHA isn’t retiring it, largely because a huge amount of existing mortgage-backed securities still reference legacy FICO for pricing and trading.
• Your minimum score thresholds (500, 580, 620, depending on down payment and program) aren’t changing with this update.
• Model consistency rules apply here too: every borrower on the loan, and every model submitted, has to line up for an Accept.

If your FHA application gets submitted with a case number before January 1, 2027, none of this applies to you yet. After that date, ask which model your FHA lender is running, same as you would on a conventional loan.

Which Credit Score Does Your Mortgage Lender Use?

This is the single most useful question you can ask a loan officer right now, and most buyers never think to ask it. Here’s how to actually find out:

1. Ask directly which model they’re pulling. Classic FICO, VantageScore 4.0, or (starting 2027) FICO 10T. Loan officers should know this without hesitation.
2. Confirm it in writing, ideally in your loan estimate or pre-approval paperwork, not just a verbal answer on a call.
3. Check whether all borrowers on the loan are scored the same way. Mixed models within one application aren’t allowed, so if you’re a couple applying together, the answer should be identical for both of you.
4. Compare that score to what your free apps show you. Credit Karma, your credit card’s free score widget, and your actual mortgage score can differ by 20 to 40 points or more, because they’re often measuring different things entirely.
5. If your lender says VantageScore 4.0, ask whether your rent payments are reported to the bureaus. If they’re not, get them reported before you apply. See the guide linked above for how.

Why This Matters More Right Now Than It Did in March

Rates are the reason. Thirty-year mortgages were running around 7.225% as of September 22, per Zillow’s daily tracker. At that level, every basis point of pricing matters more than it did when rates were lower, because the dollar cost of a small score-driven rate difference compounds over a bigger base rate.

If you’re shopping lenders right now, and with rates this high, you should be, our guide to comparing mortgage rates covers the tools for getting multiple quotes without hammering your credit with repeated hard pulls. Pair that with knowing which score each lender is actually pulling, and you can make an apples-to-apples comparison instead of guessing why two “pre-approved” rates from two lenders don’t match.

What to Do Before You Apply

A short list, not a long one:

Ask every lender you’re comparing which model they use. Two lenders quoting you different rates might be scoring you on entirely different systems. That’s not the same as one lender simply offering a better deal.

Get your rent reported if you haven’t already. VantageScore 4.0 is the model that actually uses it. If you’ve been paying rent on time for years and nothing’s showing up in your file, you’re leaving real qualifying power on the table.

Don’t assume your free app score is what a lender sees. Credit Karma’s VantageScore 3.0 and a lender’s VantageScore 4.0 pull are not interchangeable, and neither is a FICO 8 from your credit card statement.

If you’re on the edge of a rate tier, ask about a rescore. Trended data rewards a downward balance trajectory. If you’ve been paying down cards for months, that trend might already be helping you more than you’d expect from the raw number.

Don’t wait on FICO 10T. It’s not available for conventional loan delivery, and there’s no announced timeline for when that changes. Plan around VantageScore 4.0 and Classic FICO for now.

The Bottom Line

The theoretical overhaul we wrote about in March is now a lender’s Tuesday-morning decision. VantageScore 4.0 is live, cheap for lenders to pull, and available everywhere. FICO 10T is stuck behind a pricing standoff with no resolution in sight. FHA has a real date on the calendar. None of that changes what you need to do: ask your lender which score they’re using, get your rent history reported if it isn’t already, and shop more than one lender before you lock anything, especially with rates where they are right now.

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Model eligibility and dates confirmed via FHFA, Fannie Mae, and HousingWire reporting as of September 23, 2026. Pricing and rate figures change; verify current terms with your lender before applying.