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FHA & Credit Rating
DH & I are finally at a point where we're ready to purchase a home-- our family is complete, we can afford it, and we are SICK of renting and paying our landlord's mortgage, on something that's not even ours in the long run.
So we are paying off everything on our credit, except his student loans and my car (student loans are current and we are squirreling away money to pay off the car completely in the beginning of 2014, and aside from that it's in good standing as well). We will most likely be getting an FHA loan and we want to have a very small down payment or no down payment at all, but we are about 70 points away from the minimum credit score required for nothing down.
My question is, how long should we wait to try to apply for pre-approval? I don't want to have an inquiry on the report to bring our score down until our credit is good enough to get the loan, but how will I know? I have heard varying reports from different lenders and financial advisors. Some say 30 to 45 days, others say up to a year. I'm not really in a hurry, because I know I shouldn't put the cart before the horse. I'm just trying to get a feel for what to expect and how long we should wait. I like timeframes. 
TIA
And FWIW, we have an emergency fund, savings account (albeit small), and savings for both the kids.
Re: FHA & Credit Rating
In June 2013, FHA lending changed and all loans with DPs less than 10% require that the buyers pay PMI for the life of the mortgage. The only want to cancel this PMI is to refinance the mortgage as a different type of loan down the road. But if you have no equity in the home, this will be very tough, if not impossible to do. Therefore you would be stuck paying PMI even if you did have a small amount of home equity.
http://ncfhaexpert.com/fha/fha-pmi-rates-2013-and-duration-2013/
This article discusses FHA and PMI (it mentions North Carolina) but FHA is a national program.
The part you may find most interesting is toward the end.
For this reason, it may be very costly to you over time to do an FHA with nothing or little down. You may want to save at least for a 10% DP.