What is the lowest credit score a hard money lender will accept?

Of the thirteen direct lenders on our comparison table, the lowest published floor is 600, stated by both Easy Street Capital for its EasyFix program and Private Money Lenders — though PML also states that 660 or better is needed for every one of its published tiers, so 600 buys a case-by-case conversation rather than a rate. The highest floor on the table is OfferMarket at 680. Kiavi, LendingOne and Lantzman Lending publish no floor at all, which is not the same as not having one.

Can I get a hard money loan with a 600 credit score?

It is the lowest number published in this set, so it is possible with some lenders and not others — and the score is rarely the only test. Anchor's low floor comes with an expectation of three or more flips in the last twelve months. Groundfloor's 640 comes with gates on bankruptcies, foreclosures and felonies. Read the credit floor and the experience requirement together, because lenders trade them against each other deliberately.

Why do directory sites list different credit scores?

Because they are not reading the lender's page. We checked third-party figures against primary sources for every lender we collected and they were wrong for each one sampled, in some cases by 60 to 80 points or a whole product tier. Lima One's real published floor is 660, not the 600 or 630 in roundups. Anchor's is 620, not 650. Every figure in our comparison links to the lender's own page and carries the date it was read.

Hard money loans with bad credit

Hard money is asset-based, so credit matters less than it does on a conventional mortgage. It does not stop mattering. Thirteen direct fix-and-flip lenders sit on our comparison table; nine publish a credit floor and four publish none at all.

The more useful finding is that a low floor is always paid for somewhere else, and the somewhere else is usually experience. Reading the credit column on its own will send you to the wrong lender.

By George Perry · Licensed mortgage broker

Last updated September 6, 2026

What the thirteen lenders actually publish

The published floors, lowest first: Easy Street Capital and Private Money Lenders at 600, AccoLend and We Lend at 620, Groundfloor at 640, New Silver at 650, Brookview Financial and Lima One Capital at 660, and OfferMarket at 680. Four more — GoKapital, Kiavi, Lantzman Lending and ZINC Financial — publish no floor at all. Anchor Loans publishes 620 and Park Place Finance publishes an exception path down to 600; we collected both in full and neither is on our table, for reasons set out in its methodology.

Two of those correct figures in wide circulation. Lima One's 660 is stated in its own product FAQ and contradicts the 600 and 630 figures carried by every third-party roundup we checked. Anchor's 620 corrects the 650 that appears in third-party reviews. Directory credit-score figures were wrong for every lender we sampled against the lender's own pages, which is the reason this whole comparison exists.

Park Place publishes something almost nobody else puts in writing: an exception path. Its FAQ states exceptions are considered down to 600 with compensating factors — experience and additional guarantors. That is not a minimum and should not be read as one, but a written exception path is more useful than a hard number you cannot argue with.

The trade behind a low floor

Anchor Loans is the clearest case in the set. Its 620 is the lowest published floor, and its experience expectation is the heaviest: three or more successful flips in the last twelve months for easy pre-approval, five or more in eighteen months for the best rates. A borrower with a 625 score and no flips is not the borrower that floor is for.

Roc Capital runs the same trade in reverse. It is broker-channel and so not a row in our table, but its published High FICO program lets a borrower with 740 or better finance up to 90% of purchase and 100% of rehab with no prior experience at all. Credit substitutes for experience outright. Two opposite structures, both legitimate, and a borrower at 660 with no flips gets a completely different answer from each.

New Silver's 650 has the same shape. Its help centre states 650 applies with two or more completed projects and one completed project needs 700 or better. The number on the product page is real; the condition attached to it is on a different page.

Credit is not the only thing that disqualifies

Groundfloor publishes eligibility gates that have nothing to do with a score: no bankruptcies or foreclosures in the last twelve months, no felonies in the last five years, and no record of financially-related offences. It also requires the property to be under contract already. A borrower can clear the 640 floor and still be ineligible, and no comparison page we found surfaces this.

Citizenship is another one. New Silver requires a US citizen or legal resident and does not lend to foreign nationals. Lima One publishes the opposite, accepting foreign nationals including borrowers without an established US credit score. That is the single largest published divergence in the set on borrower eligibility.

And some lenders will not tell you their floor at all. Kiavi does not publish one on its fix-and-flip page — the 640 in directories comes from a third-party profile, and the 720 in roundups is the threshold for its Enterprise Program, which requires 30 or more properties and $7 million of purchases in the trailing year. LendingOne publishes an article on fix-and-flip loan requirements that suggests the mid-600s as market guidance without ever disclosing its own number.

Every figure on this page, with its source

Every credit floor in the table is printed with the condition attached to it, because the number alone misleads. The comparison carries each lender’s published guidelines with a link to the page it came from and the date it was read, plus the four broker-channel lenders cited above.

Compare fix & flip lender guidelines

Common questions

What is the lowest credit score a hard money lender will accept?: Of the thirteen direct lenders on our comparison table, the lowest published floor is 600, stated by both Easy Street Capital for its EasyFix program and Private Money Lenders — though PML also states that 660 or better is needed for every one of its published tiers, so 600 buys a case-by-case conversation rather than a rate. The highest floor on the table is OfferMarket at 680. Kiavi, LendingOne and Lantzman Lending publish no floor at all, which is not the same as not having one.
Can I get a hard money loan with a 600 credit score?: It is the lowest number published in this set, so it is possible with some lenders and not others — and the score is rarely the only test. Anchor's low floor comes with an expectation of three or more flips in the last twelve months. Groundfloor's 640 comes with gates on bankruptcies, foreclosures and felonies. Read the credit floor and the experience requirement together, because lenders trade them against each other deliberately.
Why do directory sites list different credit scores?: Because they are not reading the lender's page. We checked third-party figures against primary sources for every lender we collected and they were wrong for each one sampled, in some cases by 60 to 80 points or a whole product tier. Lima One's real published floor is 660, not the 600 or 630 in roundups. Anchor's is 620, not 650. Every figure in our comparison links to the lender's own page and carries the date it was read.

Keep reading

Fix and Flip Loans for Beginners
Fix and Flip Loans With No Money Down
Hard Money Lenders With No Credit Check
Fix & Flip Cost of Capital CalculatorWhat a quote actually costs once points, fees and the interest accrual basis are in it.

Guidelines described here were collected from each lender’s own published pages through 2026-09-06. This page describes published lending guidelines. It is not a loan offer, not a commitment to lend, and not advice about which loan to take.