<prompt> Human: Hi everyone, this is my first post on rpersonalfinance but Im not sure what find about this problem. A little backstory: my wife and I are trying to buy our first house. I have about 70k in student loans that are still in deferment because of a mixup with payment dates upon graduation. I begin paying them in January of 2018 but have already applied and been approved income based repayment. Other than the student loans that Im not currently laying on, I have one credit card thats at 33 1,500 our of 5k utilization and a car loan that only has about 3.5k left. The credit card payment is around 90 per month and the car payment is 103. That is all of my debt. My wife is considered a private contractor and hasnt been doing that for two years yet so our lender says her income will not be considered. So my debt, credit and income are all that matters. Ive been working on building up my credit in preparation for the credit inquiry from the lender. Before he pulled my credit, Credit Karma said my scores were 688 equifax and 664 trans union. It only shows two of the three. He pulled my credit score yesterday and somehow it showed transunion as 640, equifax as 612 and experian as 588. This is completely different and significantly lower than the credit report I received from them and credit karma. He said it is my mortgage profile and more accurate. These numbers essentially shot a mortgage dead. Unfortunately, I have never had a late payment and besides my student loans, all of my debt is already in a good utilization range. According to our lender, the fact that my student loans are all separate and still at 100, he doesnt see any way to raise my score. He essentially said Im doing nothing wrong but Im being discriminated against because of the type of debt I have. I told him if I have to make a meaningful dent in my student loans, then a house wont be possible for years. Sorry for the long winded post, but here are my questions:How is my mortgage profile score that much lower than my credit report and credit karma?Is there any way to raise my credit score since the thing that seems to be affecting it is my student loans that wont be paid down much any time soon?If student loans have such a negative effect, how does anyone buy a house, ever? Everyone has student debt. What else can I do to prepare for another shot at approval in the near future?  <response>: Mortgage scores are just different than CC application scores. Stuff is weighted differently.If you want to raise your score, just keep paying your bills on time.Not everybody has student loan debt, I paid off ALL my debts every dime before I bought a house. Yes, it set me back a while to pay tens of thousands of student loan debts. I did, however, go into the mortgage process with the highest possible score as a result, though.Why do you think you need approval in the near future? Just rent for another few years and then reapply. You arent ready anyway if you are having all this debt.Do like a normal person and pay off your debts and build your score and then when you have a better position then go back to the banks.Its also not a benefit to be on income based repayment. That probably means your financial situation is not a great one to buy a house in anyway. If your financial situation were house-buying-ready, then you wouldnt need to be on IBR. You would be able to just pay your loans like normal.A bank isnt going to be happy that you are trying to skate out of paying on these other loans like you should be when they are thinking about loaning you many hundreds of thousands of dollars themselves. For all they know you are going to try to skate out of paying them like you should be doing also. 