Faith, I think the best thing for you to do is check with a lender that handles loans such as FHA or USDA. These lenders are able to work better with customers that have less than perfect credit scores. The house that you are interested in may or may not qualify for these loans but no harm in finding out.

Dear Faith C,

You might need just a credit score boost or you might need credit repair.
In order to get a credit score boost you will want to pay down any credit card balaces to 30% of the credit limit. For example if your credit card limit is $3k then you want to keep the balance under $1k. This is a credit score boost.

You might need credit repair, which is if you have slow pays, late pays, collections, charge offs, etc. This process takes 4-6 months and the fee is $399.00 (with a money back policy). During the credit repair process you may want to pay down credit card balances as well. However, I will assist you in repairing your credit during this process. Meanwhile, you can work on developing new habits with regard to your credit and impliment good spending and saving habits. Imagine how much easier life is going to be with excellent credit?

The lender will want to know why your scores are so low. The loan amount has nothing to do with the score. You are going to need to get your scores up above 620 and save about $2000 for down payment. Also, certain lenders charge discount points for loans below $100,000 because there is no profit on such low loan amounts.