Anyone who has bought a house?

Even though I think you are doing the right thing, I can't figure out how your loan guy knows that your score will raise by 77 points.  That seems like such a random number to me.  Anywho, have a look at your credit report to make sure there are no inaccuracies.  When we went to buy a house some apartment complex in another state had tacked a collection in my husband's name that was not his.  We had to fight it and eventually got it removed, but it made a big dent that hurt his score.  I think after getting it taken care of his score came up within a month or so.  I think the credit agency says they legally have up to 90 days to resolve it if I'm not mistaken.

Good luck!  Being a homeowner is so much better than paying someone else's mortage IMHO.  Awesome that you're getting a USDA loan!  I wish we had done that for the no down payment, but the house we wanted didn't qualify so we went FHA. 

the creditor he uses ran different senarios in the computer seeing how certain things would effect our credit..  I am so sick of renting ****ty apartments when we could pay less for a mortgage.

 Oddly enough, part of the problem your score is low is likely because you have few cards with low limits. But, being close to your limit on credit does impact your score, so paying it down a bit is probably the fastest thing you can do to improve it. 

we paid them yesterday and the loan guy said they went up 70 points which is awesome.  So we are going ahead with the process!!  he said we can most likely qualify for a 100-110k loan!!!!! yay!