What rate should you expect with a 780 credit score and 20 percent down?

Here is what every page answering this question does: it prints a table of average rates that was stale the day it was published. Rates move every day, so this page will not pretend otherwise. What it will do is show you exactly what your profile buys, from the published record, because that part does not move with the market.

A 780 score with 20 percent down is a strong conventional pricing profile, though not quite the floor. On the agencies' published matrices, effective January 2026, that profile carries a pricing adjustment of 0.375 points of the loan amount, and a point here is a one-time cost of one percent of the loan, not something added to your rate: 0.375 points on a $400,000 loan is $1,500, which lenders typically fold into the rate in small fractions of a percent. The last 0.375 disappears at 25 percent down, where this score band's adjustment reaches zero. For comparison, on the same morning with the same down payment: a 740 to 759 score carries 0.875 points, a 700 to 719 score carries 1.375 points, and a 680 to 699 score carries 1.750 points.

Source: Fannie Mae LLPA Matrix and Freddie Mac Exhibit 19, effective 2026-01-28. One point = 1 percent of the loan amount.

What that means in practice: your quotes should sit at or below the day's market average for a 30 year conventional loan, because the daily average blends in many scenarios carrying heavier adjustments than yours. If a quote for this profile comes in meaningfully above the day's average lock rate without points paid explaining it, the pricing deserves a question.

Two honest cautions. First, lenders convert adjustment points into rate, fees, or a mix, so two fair quotes for this profile can look different on paper: one slightly lower rate with higher Section A fees, one the reverse. Judge them together, never the rate alone. Second, your profile has more dimensions than score and down payment: occupancy, property type, loan purpose, and a second mortgage each carry their own published adjustments, and any one of them can move your fair price.

So the honest answer to the headline question has two parts. The part that never moves: 0.375 points, the published price of your tier, among the best there is. The part that moves daily: the market level itself, which is why a real answer has to be assembled on the day your loan is priced, for your whole scenario, the way our report does it.

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