FHFA says Fannie, Freddie will use one LLPA grid for FICO and VantageScore

Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte said Monday that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will use a single pricing matrix for loan-level price adjustments (LLPAs) on mortgages scored with either Classic FICO or VantageScore 4.0. “Fannie and Freddie are hereby moving to ONE PRICING GRID with VantageScore joining the existing FICO Classic pricing grid,” Pulte posted on social media platform X regarding the change. Pulte said the move to a single grid follows feedback from lenders and consumers, adding that maintaining separate grids “makes zero sense.” The decision builds upon an announcement at the start of September that Fannie- and Freddie-approved lenders can use either Classic FICO or VantageScore 4.0 for eligible conventional loans, although lenders must use the same scoring model for all borrowers on a loan. Under that framework, VantageScore 4.0 scores were subject to a 20-point downward adjustment to account for differences between the models. But the pricing grid shared by Pulte on Monday removes the 20-point adjustment. The change does not eliminate FICO from the mortgage process. Classic FICO remains an option and is still required for manually underwritten l...