New Credit Scoring Models Now Count Rent and Utility Payments

By Bryan David

Bryan David is one of the best REALTORS® serving Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Gulfport and the entire coast. He is a Biloxi native, military veteran and retiree, and a multi-year top-producing agent with hundreds of satisfied clients.

If you’ve been trying to buy a home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and kept hearing that your credit score wasn’t high enough, you need to hear what just came out of Washington.

This is the biggest change to how credit gets measured in decades, and it could put you in a new home sooner than you thought possible. Here’s what happened.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will now accept two modern credit scoring models: VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are live with this change effective immediately. FHA is in the pipeline.

Here’s why it matters to you. The old credit scoring system had a massive blind spot. If you paid your rent on time every single month for ten years, that history did not count toward your credit score. If you paid your power bill, your water bill, and your internet bill on time for years, none of it factored in.

Think about that. The two most important monthly payments most renters make, rent and utilities, were completely invisible to the credit system. And yet, those are two of the most predictive signals in the world that you are good for a mortgage.

Under the new scoring models, rental history and utility payments are now part of the credit calculation. If you’ve been paying your rent on time, you’re finally going to get credit for it.

Who does this help the most? There are a few groups of buyers on the Gulf Coast who should be paying close attention.

1. First-time home buyers. If you’re in your 20s, 30s, or even older and you’ve been a responsible renter but never had a car loan or a stack of credit cards, your old FICO score probably didn’t reflect how reliable you actually are. The new models fix that by recognizing the payments you’ve already been making. That changes your position significantly.
2. Credit-challenged buyers. Maybe you hit a rough spot a few years ago. A medical bill that went to collections, a missed payment during a job change. If you’ve been paying your rent and utilities on time since then, that positive history can now help offset older setbacks on your report. This gives you a path forward that didn’t exist before.
3. Military buyers. VantageScore has been approved for VA loans since 2024, but lender adoption has been slow. This broader announcement from FHFA and HUD should push that adoption forward and give service members better access to the recognition they deserve.

I want to be clear on one thing, because both the FHFA director and the HUD secretary were emphatic about it. This does not lower the bar. You still have to be creditworthy and trustworthy. What this does is give credit where credit is already due. It counts the payments you’re already making every month.

For buyers across D’Iberville and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, this could play out in three ways.

1. You qualify when you didn’t before because your score comes up once rent and utility payments are counted.
2. You get a better interest rate. Higher scores mean lower rates, and over a 30-year mortgage, that’s real money back in your pocket.
3. The cost of pulling your credit score itself just dropped. There’s a pricing war happening right now between VantageScore and FICO, and those savings flow through to you at closing.

Sellers, this matters for you too. If you’re thinking about selling a home on the coast, here’s the short version. A bigger pool of qualified buyers is good news. More buyers being able to get approved for a mortgage means more competition for your home, and that supports pricing. This is a tailwind for sellers, not just for buyers.

If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines because you thought your credit wasn’t there yet, let’s talk. We have trusted local lenders who can pull both the old and new credit models and show you exactly where you stand under the updated rules.

Whether you’re looking to buy, sell, or invest in real estate on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we’d love to help you make the most of this moment. Give us a call at 228-215-1861 or email bryan@expectrealty.com, or visit expectrealty.com. Let’s get the ball rolling.