Mortgages: better credit vs Good down payment?

Me and my husband are 22 and we have saved up about 12k because we want to buy a house. The problem is that we are about 7k in credit card debt because we struggled our first year of marriage. Now we both have good jobs and are paying the cards monthly and saving up for a down payment but honestly I want to pay off my credit cards and start saving up from scratch. I don't know if that is a good idea as we want to get a house very soon (in the next 3-4 years). We save about 500-1000k monthly for the down payment.

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