US: TransUnion and Equifax let mortgage lenders buy scores later

In this article

Written by

Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →

Two of the three national credit bureaus in the United States changed the order in which a mortgage lender can buy credit information this week. TransUnion and Equifax each announced on Thursday 8 October 2026 a tool that lets a lender pull a borrower's credit file without a credit score attached and add a score afterwards, the trade publication HousingWire reported on 9 October.

Until now, TransUnion says, lenders have tended to buy scores at the very start of a loan file. The two launches separate the file from the score, so that a lender can read the credit data first and pay for a score once it knows the loan is going somewhere.

The two products are not identical, and the prices published for them are partial. What follows sets out what each company has announced in its own release, what HousingWire added, and what none of them has yet said.

What each bureau announced

TransUnion's product is called TransUnion First Look Functionality for Mortgage. Its release, dated 8 October 2026 from Chicago, describes it as a way for mortgage lenders to review what a credit report shows before they purchase scores. A lender can buy a credit report alone, or a report with one score of its choice, and then request more scores only when the loan needs them.

Equifax's product is called Equifax Mortgage Score Select. Its release, issued the same day from Atlanta, says lenders and brokers can pull an Equifax mortgage credit file during origination either with no score or with one selected score. The scores on offer are VantageScore 4.0, Classic FICO and, in the company's words, FICO Score 10T once it is approved.

Both companies present the change as a cost measure. HousingWire, whose mortgage reporter covered the two launches together, wrote that they arrive while originators face persistent pressure on margins and new requirements on which scores they may use. It named Satyan Merchant, senior vice president and mortgage business leader at TransUnion, and Joel Rickman, general manager and senior vice president of US mortgage and verification services at Equifax, as the executives presenting the products. HousingWire added that TransUnion did not immediately respond to its request for comment.

The cost the bureaus say they are cutting

TransUnion's release names the problem directly. Traditional workflows, it says, often make lenders buy scores early, even when the credit data alone already shows whether a loan should move ahead, take a streamlined route or be set aside. Lenders often need several scores in the course of one origination. When scores are bought too early and the loan does not proceed, the company calls what was spent "fallout" costs.

HousingWire puts the same point in its own terms: lenders often buy multiple scores early in the process, even when the credit data already in hand is enough to decide whether a file should go on. The aim of both products, in its account, is to match credit spending to the loans that are likely to close.

There is a second cost inside the first. If a lender pulls a file without a score and comes back for the score later, it would ordinarily pay for the file twice. Each bureau answers that in its own way, and the difference between the two answers is the most practical part of the announcements.

How a later score is charged

TransUnion says that adding scores after the first purchase does not trigger the cost of a second credit report, provided that all eligibility and matching conditions are met. The release as read for this article does not list those conditions, and it sets no time limit in the way Equifax does. A lender would need the company's own terms to know when the exemption applies.

Equifax sets a price and a clock. Its release says a second pull of the file within 24 hours costs US$1, plus the cost of the selected score, or US$1 alone if no score is requested. An Equifax spokesperson gave HousingWire the other half of the sum: the first pull is charged at the customer's contracted price for the credit file, plus the cost of the score selected, if any. HousingWire noted that its article was updated to carry that statement.

Taken together, the Equifax sequence for a lender that starts without a score and then chooses VantageScore 4.0 has three parts: the contracted file price on the first pull, then US$1 for the file and US$1 for the score on a repull inside 24 hours. The contracted file price is the one figure that is not public; it is set between Equifax and each customer.

Equifax also ties each mortgage credit file to a single score, chosen by the lender. The company says this makes underwriting reviews simpler, because it is clear which score drove each decision, and that its file works with any of the scores on its list.

Where the two products fit in a loan file

TransUnion says First Look works in both soft-pull and hard-pull workflows and through mortgage resellers, the intermediaries through which many lenders obtain credit reports. It also says the product works with the automated underwriting systems used for loans bound for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, and that it requires no change to existing selling guidelines or policies.

The release gives one example at the early, soft-pull stage. With a TransUnion product named TruVision Early Access Soft Check, a lender can assess a borrower's eligibility using the credit report and VantageScore 4.0, together with indicators drawn from the report such as bankruptcy risk and eligibility for streamlined programmes, before another score is needed. Trended credit data, alternative credit attributes and income and employment verification are listed as optional additions.

Equifax describes its product as available to lenders and brokers during origination. Its release says the product also meets the current score requirements of certain secondary-market investors, without naming them.

Experian, the third national bureau, does not appear in either release or in HousingWire's report of 9 October.

How score prices have moved in a year

The launches sit on top of a sharp change in what a score costs. On 17 October 2025, HousingWire reported the prices the bureaus had set for 2026. TransUnion said it would charge US$4 per VantageScore 4.0 score for mortgage, and nothing for lenders that also bought a FICO score through the end of 2026. Equifax said it would charge US$4.50 through 2027, with the same free offer through 2026. Experian said it would offer VantageScore 4.0 at no cost indefinitely, and pledged that any future price would be at least 50 per cent below FICO's.

The comparison all three were drawing was with FICO. TransUnion's release of that date said FICO's price for 2026 would double to US$10 per score. HousingWire reported that FICO had also launched a performance-based model for scores distributed through resellers: a royalty of US$4.95 per score, and a "funded loan fee" of US$33 per borrower, per score, charged when a loan closes.

A year on, the published VantageScore 4.0 prices at the two bureaus are 99 cents and US$1. TransUnion's release says its 99-cent mortgage pricing has been extended through 2028, and that lenders pay nothing for the score when they pull it alongside a FICO Score; the company's newsroom dates that extension 29 September 2026. HousingWire reports that Equifax is keeping its US$1 price through the end of 2028, a decision that came before this week's launch. The sources read for this article do not say on what date each lower price first applied.

The chart shows only the score. The file underneath it, which is what both new products rearrange, has no published price in any of these sources.

Why the choice of score is now open

The choice between scores is recent, which is why "which score, and when" is a new question. On 22 April 2026 the Federal Housing Finance Agency published a joint announcement by Scott Turner, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and William J. Pulte, the agency's director. It said the Federal Housing Administration would allow VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T as eligible scoring models for the mortgages it insures, and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were updating their selling guides and would accept VantageScore-scored loans from approved lenders. The release linked the step to the Credit Score Competition Act of 2018.

That release gave no start date for the Federal Housing Administration. HousingWire now reports one: the administration will accept Classic FICO, FICO 10T or VantageScore 4.0 for eligible mortgages from 1 January 2027. Equifax's release gives the same date for VantageScore 4.0 and presents its product as preparation for it.

VantageScore itself is a joint venture of Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, as HousingWire noted on 1 October 2026. The bureaus are therefore pricing a score they own against one they distribute for another company. In the same article HousingWire reported that Mr Pulte had said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would use a single pricing grid treating VantageScore 4.0 as equivalent to Classic FICO, reversing grids released weeks earlier that had assumed VantageScore ran about 20 points higher.

The number of bureaus is under discussion too. That 1 October article relayed a Bloomberg report, covered here on 8 October and still unconfirmed by the agency in the sources read, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be told to accept credit reports built from two bureaus in place of three.

What changes for lenders, brokers and buyers

For a lender, the decision that moves is timing. Under either product it can look at a file first and decide afterwards whether a score is worth buying, and at Equifax it has 24 hours to come back at the US$1 file price. What it saves depends on figures that are not public: its own contracted file price, how many of its files fall out before a score is needed, and, at TransUnion, whether a given file meets the conditions for waiving the second report charge.

For a broker, Equifax's release names brokers alongside lenders as users of its product, and TransUnion says its product is available through resellers. Neither release describes a separate price for brokers.

For a buyer, nothing in the two announcements changes what a lender needs in order to approve a loan. TransUnion states that no selling guideline or policy has to change for its product. Neither company says whether, or how, a lower cost to the lender would reach the borrower's closing costs, and neither gives a figure for it.

For agents, the short version for a client who asks is this: two bureaus now let a lender check a credit file before paying for a score, which may change when in the process a score is ordered, not whether one is required.

The dates already fixed are few. The Federal Housing Administration's wider choice of scores starts on 1 January 2027. Both bureaus' VantageScore 4.0 prices are set through 2028. FICO Score 10T becomes an option at Equifax only once it is approved, and the release gives no date for that.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →