On April 22, 2026, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started accepting a new type of credit score that counts your on-time rent and utility payments. If you've been paying rent reliably for years and keep getting told your score isn't high enough to qualify for a mortgage, that calculation just shifted in your favor.
What Fannie and Freddie Actually Changed
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don't lend money directly. They buy mortgages from lenders and set the rules those lenders follow. When they change their standards, lenders across the country adjust their underwriting to match. That's why this announcement matters beyond a policy press release.
The new "predictive" credit scoring models pull in alternative data that traditional FICO scores have always ignored: whether you paid rent on time, whether your utility bills are paid consistently, and other recurring payment patterns. A renter paying $1,250 a month without missing a payment for three years has been proving financial responsibility every single month. The old scoring system treated that track record as invisible. The new one doesn't.
This is a meaningful shift for anyone with a thin credit file. Thin files are more common than people realize, especially among renters who've responsibly avoided carrying credit card debt, recent graduates, or anyone who hasn't taken out an auto loan in the last few years. Traditional FICO needs a minimum number of accounts and payment history to generate a score at all. Rent, which is often the largest monthly bill a person pays, never counted.
Who This Helps Most
You're probably in this group if you've been:
- Paying rent reliably for two or more years
- Paying utilities in your name
- Getting pre-approval feedback that puts your score at 620 to 635 when lenders want 640 or higher
- Avoiding credit card debt or carrying very little of it
To be direct: this doesn't guarantee approval. Lenders still evaluate your income, your debt-to-income ratio, and your down payment. What changes is that your actual payment behavior, the thing you've been doing month after month without credit for it, can now work in your favor instead of being ignored. That's not a minor update. For some buyers, it's the difference between qualifying and not.
If you've been working through the process and wondering where your score stands relative to current programs, the Indianapolis First-Time Home Buyer Guide walks through the baseline requirements most buyers face before they sit down with a lender.
How to Make Sure Your Rent History Is Actually Being Captured
This is the part most coverage of this policy skips entirely. The new scoring models can only count your rent if the data is flowing somewhere. There's no automatic switch. Here's what to check:
Find out how your landlord collects rent. If you pay through a property management platform like Avail, Rentec Direct, Buildium, or AppFolio, your payment history may already be reported to credit bureaus, or the option may exist to turn it on. Ask your landlord or property manager directly whether payments are being reported.
If rent isn't being reported, set it up yourself. Services like Rental Kharma and RentTrack let renters self-report payment history. Some cost $5 to $10 per month. If you're planning to buy in the next 12 to 24 months, that's a reasonable investment to make sure your biggest monthly bill is working for you.
Pull your credit report now. AnnualCreditReport.com gives you free access to your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion reports. Look for any tradeline labeled "rental" or "lease." If it's there, your rent history is being tracked. If it isn't, that's your project for this week.
Make sure utilities are in your name. Electric, gas, and internet accounts in your name can potentially be captured under the new predictive models. If your utilities are bundled into your rent and you never see a bill directly, that history can't be picked up. When you renew or move, ask whether you can take on the utility accounts directly.
What This Means Specifically in Indianapolis
Indianapolis is one of the more accessible housing markets in the Midwest. Median home prices in the city run roughly $250,000 to $280,000 as of spring 2026, well below the national median. That gap between what you're paying in rent and what a mortgage would cost is smaller here than in most cities people are relocating from.
The credit score barrier has been one of the more stubborn reasons Indianapolis renters stay renters longer than they want to. If you're renting in Fountain Square, Irvington, Castleton, or anywhere in the city at $1,200 to $1,400 a month, you've been paying more than some mortgage payments and building nothing from it. That's the core frustration this policy is designed to address.
One honest caveat: lenders have to adopt the new scoring models on their own timelines, and not every lender in Indianapolis will move at the same pace. The change was announced in late April 2026, and implementation will roll out over the months that follow. Your job right now is to document your history and clean up your report so you're ready when you do sit down with a lender who's already on board. If you want to know which lenders in Indianapolis are already working with the new models, that's exactly the kind of thing we can help you sort out before you start making calls.
It's also worth reading through some of the common homebuying myths that trip up first-time buyers in Indianapolis before you start the process. A few of them relate directly to credit, and knowing what's actually true going in saves a lot of frustration.
Steps to Take Before You Talk to a Lender
If you're in the window of 6 to 18 months before you want to buy, here's a practical list:
- Pull your credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com and dispute anything that looks incorrect. Errors appear more often than most people expect, and disputing them takes about 30 days to resolve.
- Get rent-reporting set up if it isn't already. Ask your landlord or property manager whether they can report retroactively, some services allow it.
- Confirm your utility accounts are in your name. If they're not, ask whether you can take them on directly at your next renewal.
- Avoid opening new credit cards or making large credit purchases in the six months before you apply. New inquiries temporarily lower your score and can confuse the picture for underwriters.
- Have a conversation with a Roots agent before you talk to a lender. We work with buyers at all stages of the credit process, and we can point you toward lenders who've already adopted the new scoring models. We can also give you an honest read on what price range makes sense for your situation in Indianapolis right now, without pressure.
The credit system has always had blind spots for people who do the right thing without a traditional borrowing history. Three years of on-time rent should count. It finally does. If you've been told "not yet" because of your score, it's worth taking another look at where you stand.
If you want to talk through your specific situation, including which neighborhoods in Indianapolis fit your budget or which lenders are already working with the new models, we're glad to help. No obligation, no pressure. Here's what the buying process looks like in Indianapolis right now if you want to get oriented before reaching out.