There are many different credit bureaus and scoring models, and creditors may take more than one into account. Mortgage lenders typically look at your FICO score reported by 3 credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax and Transunion.

In most instances, mortgage lenders use the middle score for a conservative yet fair measure of your borrowing activity. Or, if you have a joint applicant, the lender will use the middle score of the borrower with the lowest score.

There are some lenders who will use a blended score where they use the average of the 3 scores for each borrower. This can be good for some borrowers but bad for others. This is very new to the industry and not used often.