How To Improve Your Credit Score For Better Financing Terms You have found a home and are ready to apply for financing. Your pre-approval amount comes back not as high as you would have expected and at an interest rate significantly above what your friends just got on their loan. This could be because you have an average to poor credit score. Mortgage lenders base their interest rates on many things, but your credit score plays a large part. Anything between 720 and 850 will typically get you better interest rates. A mediocre score is usually between 660 and 719, (1 comments)