You see advertisements for those historically-low mortgage interest rates everywhere. So naturally, you figure it’s time to refinance or apply for a new mortgage. But once your application is accepted, you realize your interest rate is one – or even two – percentage points higher than the national average. What happened?

In a nutshell, the lender thought you were a risk. That’s because one way to look at your mortgage interest rate is that it’s a representation of how much of a risk a lender believes you to be: the higher the risk, the higher the cost of borrowing the money.

The natural next question is: What makes for a low-risk mortgage applicant? Well, we spoke to some experts to find out. So read on to see what it takes to qualify for those super-low mortgage interest rates.

Criteria #1: Credit Score of 740 and above

When a lender is…