Down Payment Assistance

Three programs, and one of them is a genuine grant

The grant is the one to understand first. It is 2% or 3.5% of the purchase price, it is not repaid, and there is no second lien on your property at all. Nothing appears in your debt ratio.

Most people assume assistance always means a lien and a catch. Here it does not.

The other two are loans. A forgivable option at 0% with no monthly payment, forgiven after a holding period. And a repayable second mortgage over ten years at a rate above your first mortgage rate, whose payment does count in your debt ratio.

The grant qualifies people by occupation, not just income

You qualify if any one of these is true: household income at or below 140% of the state or county median, or you are a first responder including police, firefighter, public safety officer, paramedic, or EMT including volunteers, or an educator, or medical personnel including nurses, doctors, phlebotomists, and hospital or Red Cross workers, or a civil servant at the federal, state, or local level, or military personnel, or a first-time buyer, or the property is in an underserved census tract.

That list is wider than people expect. A teacher, a nurse, or a firefighter qualifies on occupation alone regardless of income.

The grant requires a 620 minimum credit score, a 1-4 unit primary residence, and a homeownership counseling course whose cost is credited back to you at closing up to $100. It cannot be combined with FHA High Balance, a temporary buydown, or another assistance program.

The forgiveness period is not the same on every option

This is the detail that decides whether assistance fits your plans, and it is worth asking about before you pick a program.

Some options forgive after six months. Others require 36 on-time payments, meaning three years of on-time history before the assistance is yours. If you sell inside the forgiveness window, the assistance is repaid.

That gap matters. Six months barely constrains anyone. Three years is a real commitment, and if there is any chance you move or refinance inside that window it changes which option makes sense. On the forgivable options, refinancing inside the holding period can permanently end the forgiveness and make the balance repayable. A late payment can reset the clock.

Ask which program you are being offered, not just how much assistance comes with it.

What assistance actually costs you

The grant is genuinely free money. The other two are not.

With the forgivable and repayable options, your first mortgage is priced differently depending on which you choose. Assistance is not free in those cases. You are paying for it in rate. What it solves is not having cash today, not the total cost of borrowing.

If you have the down payment saved, take neither. Standard financing will cost you less over the life of the loan. Assistance exists to solve a cash problem.

We do not publish rate numbers on this or any page, because rates move weekly and a published figure is wrong the following week. What does not move is the structure: the repayable second sits above your first mortgage rate, the forgivable option carries the highest rate of the three, and standard financing with no assistance carries the lowest.