You do not need perfect credit, and four myths that keep people renting

Myth one: you need a 720

FHA lends at 580. Conventional generally starts at 620. A 720 changes what the money costs, not whether you can borrow it.

There is a real cost to a lower score — see what score you actually need — but “I will wait until my credit is perfect” is a decision to keep paying rent while prices and rates do whatever they do. Those are two different questions and they deserve to be separated.

Myth two: you need 20% down

You do not. What 20% does is remove mortgage insurance, and that is a trade, not a rule.

Conventional loans go to 3% for qualified first-time buyers, FHA to 3.5%, and VA and USDA to zero. Below 20% you pay mortgage insurance, which on a conventional loan comes off once the balance drops below 78% of value — on an FHA loan it usually does not.

The arithmetic worth doing is not “20% or nothing”. It is: what does waiting three more years to save the difference cost in rent, and what does the house cost by then? Our rent or buy calculator runs both sides honestly, including the case where waiting wins.

Myth three: a collection means no

It depends entirely on what it is, how old, and how big — and the instinct to pay it immediately is sometimes the wrong move.

Medical collections are treated differently from consumer ones, and small balances below a threshold may not need to be resolved at all. Paying an old collection can re-date it and move the score down before closing. Ask a lender before you pay anything: it is a free conversation and it can save a band.

Myth four: renting is throwing money away

This one runs in the other direction, and it is just as wrong.

Renting is buying housing without buying the asset, and there are situations where it is clearly the better call: if you may move within three or four years, if your income is about to change, or if the numbers only work on an optimistic view of appreciation. Selling a Florida home costs roughly 8% of the price between commission, documentary stamps, title and settlement. In a short hold there is no time to earn that back.