FHFA Studies Single Credit Reports as Pulte Targets FICO Mortgage Costs

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte is considering a potentially sweeping change to mortgage underwriting: allowing lenders to rely on just one credit report instead of pulling data from all three nationwide credit bureaus.

Pulte said Sept. 9 that FHFA is focused on lowering borrowing costs while studying both single-report and “bi-merge” credit reporting, which would use two bureaus instead of the traditional three. He also said federal housing officials planned to meet with Experian, Equifax and TransUnion this week.

The idea remains under study — FHFA has not ordered lenders or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to switch to a single-bureau system. But the comments significantly raise the stakes in an increasingly public fight over the cost of mortgage credit reports and credit scores.

They also come as Fannie and Freddie are opening their systems more broadly to VantageScore 4.0, giving mortgage lenders a competing alternative to Classic FICO for eligible conventional loans.

Pulte Takes Aim at FICO Pricing

Pulte accused FICO of keeping mortgage borrowing costs unnecessarily high, saying the company appeared more interested in increasing prices than offering competitive costs.

FICO did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on Pulte's latest criticism. The company has previously defended its mortgage pricing and introduced a direct licensing program that it says can lower lenders' score costs.

The broader dispute is about more than the price of a single score.

Mortgage lenders typically purchase credit information through specialized resellers, with data coming from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion and credit scores calculated using an approved scoring model. Fees can include bureau data charges, score royalties, reseller costs and other services.

Industry groups have argued that the combined expense has climbed rapidly.

The Community Home Lenders of America said in a March 2026 analysis that its members were experiencing average credit-report costs of about $540 per closed conventional loan, compared with roughly $50 in 2022. CHLA attributed a significant portion of that increase to higher FICO score charges, although the total figure includes costs beyond FICO's own royalty.

FICO's own financial results confirm that mortgage-score pricing has become a larger revenue driver. The company's business-to-business Scores revenue rose 49% year over year in its fiscal third quarter of 2026, with FICO saying the increase was primarily attributable to a higher mortgage-origination score unit price.

FICO Says It Has Already Created a Lower-Cost Option

FICO has pushed back against the idea that it alone is responsible for rising mortgage credit costs.

Its Mortgage Direct License Program allows participating tri-merge resellers to calculate and distribute FICO Scores without relying on the credit bureaus to distribute the score itself.

Under one Classic FICO pricing option announced by the company, the royalty is $4.95 per score plus a $33 funded-loan fee per borrower per score. FICO also offers a $10-per-score model without the funded-loan fee. The company has said the $4.95 structure can cut the per-score charge by 50% compared with what resellers were paying on average through credit bureaus in 2025.

For FICO Score 10T, the company has advertised a separate direct-license option priced at 99 cents per score plus a $65 funding fee.

That means the pricing debate is partly a fight over where costs originate in the mortgage credit-reporting chain — the scoring company, the three bureaus, resellers or some combination of them.

VantageScore Competition Expands

FHFA is simultaneously increasing competitive pressure on FICO by accelerating adoption of VantageScore 4.0.

On Sept. 9, Fannie Mae expanded VantageScore 4.0 from a limited rollout to all Fannie Mae-approved lenders. Freddie Mac also expanded availability to its approved single-family sellers, according to its latest lender guidance reported by HousingWire.

Lenders are not required to abandon Classic FICO. Fannie Mae says an approved lender may choose VantageScore 4.0 or continue using an eligible Classic FICO score for qualifying loans.

But there is an important limitation: broader VantageScore availability does not currently eliminate the three-bureau credit report.

When a lender chooses VantageScore 4.0 for an eligible Fannie Mae loan, Fannie requires the score to be requested from each of the three credit bureaus through a three-in-file merged credit report.

FHFA's published interim framework likewise states that introducing VantageScore 4.0 does not initially change the Enterprises' credit-reporting requirements.

That is why Pulte's latest comments are significant: moving to one bureau would represent a separate and potentially more disruptive phase of mortgage credit modernization.

FHFA Has Considered Fewer Credit Reports Before

Reducing the number of required credit reports is not a completely new idea.

When FHFA approved FICO Score 10T and VantageScore 4.0 in 2022, the agency also announced plans to move Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the traditional tri-merge model to a bi-merge system using two of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies.

FHFA later aligned that transition with its broader credit-score modernization effort, but implementation was delayed as the agency and GSEs worked through operational and market concerns.

A single-report system would go one step further.

Instead of choosing two bureau files, a lender could potentially evaluate a borrower using information from only Equifax, Experian or TransUnion, depending on how any eventual system were designed.

That could materially reduce the number of reports purchased for every mortgage application.

But it could also change the information lenders see.

Why a Single Credit Report Is Controversial

Credit files are not necessarily identical across all three bureaus.

Creditors may report information at different times or to different bureaus, meaning an account, balance, collection or payment history visible on one report might not appear in exactly the same way on another.

TransUnion has argued forcefully against moving to a single-bureau mortgage system.

In a company simulation, TransUnion estimated that such a model could cause 4.4 million consumers to lose access to agency-backed mortgages and result in $6.5 billion in additional consumer interest costs because some borrowers could fall into less favorable credit tiers. It also estimated that roughly 300,000 consumers could receive mortgages they otherwise would not qualify for because of incomplete credit information.

Those figures are TransUnion's own modeling estimates and should not be treated as findings by FHFA or an independent regulator.

The debate therefore presents FHFA with a tradeoff.

Using fewer reports could reduce transaction costs and force more competition among the credit bureaus. But regulators would also have to determine whether the savings outweigh potential differences in credit coverage, underwriting accuracy and mortgage-market risk.

What This Means for Mortgage Borrowers

For homebuyers, nothing changes immediately because of Pulte's single-report comments.

Borrowers applying for conventional mortgages sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac should still expect lenders to follow current GSE credit-reporting requirements.

What is changing now is the amount of competition available in credit scoring.

VantageScore 4.0 has moved from limited deployment to broad lender availability, while Experian has priced standalone VantageScore 4.0 mortgage scores at 99 cents and has offered the model at no additional score charge under certain bundled arrangements. Equifax and other industry participants have also introduced pricing designed to encourage VantageScore adoption.

More competition could put pressure on credit-score and credit-report prices even before FHFA decides whether to reduce the number of reports required.

For lenders, however, the next stage could be much more consequential.

A shift from three reports to two — or eventually one — would affect credit vendors, underwriting systems, quality control, loan pricing, investor analytics and the way lenders manage differences among borrowers' bureau files.

What Happens Next

The immediate issue to watch is whether FHFA's discussions with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion produce voluntary pricing changes or a more formal policy proposal.

Pulte has so far described single-report credit underwriting as something the agency is studying, not an approved rule.

That distinction matters.

FHFA is simultaneously trying to increase competition and reduce mortgage costs while remaining responsible for the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Any move toward a single credit bureau would have to confront the question at the center of the debate: whether lower upfront credit-report costs can be achieved without sacrificing enough borrower information to create larger costs elsewhere in the mortgage system.

For now, VantageScore competition is already expanding. Whether the traditional three-bureau mortgage report is the next piece of the system to change may become one of FHFA's biggest housing-finance decisions yet.