Down payment assistance programs by state

Owning a home years back doesn't necessarily disqualify you. HUD, the federal housing agency, treats you as a first-time buyer when you haven't held an ownership stake in any property during the 3 years leading up to your loan file being opened. HUD also applies that 3-year rule to a divorced or legally separated person whose only past ownership was shared with a spouse.

An FHA loan on its own doesn't require first-time buyer status. Plenty of down payment and closing cost programs do, however, and each program can set its own definition of first-time buyer. For that reason, the state agency's definition is the one that decides whether its help reaches you.

That phrase gets used loosely for anything that makes buying cheaper, and in everyday use it points to these same state programs. What actually matters for you isn't the label. It's whether the money must be repaid, and at what point.

Out of the 144 programs in our table, 119 connect to a specific named first mortgage offered by the same agency. In practice, that means you generally can't grab the assistance by itself and pair it with whatever loan you prefer. You take the agency's mortgage, and the help arrives bundled with it.

The second loan is the most common form of help. With a deferred loan, nothing is due each month; repayment happens down the road, typically at sale, refinance or payoff. A repayable loan works differently, carrying a monthly payment that usually runs for a fixed stretch of years. Before you sign, ask the agency how long the repayment runs and how much each monthly payment will be.

Rather than a set dollar amount, many programs express the help as a percentage of the price or loan. That's how 79 programs operate, and 58 of them award 3% to 5%. Because these amounts grow with the price of the home, ask the agency what the percentage works out to for the home you have in mind.

With a forgivable loan, the second loan shrinks bit by bit as you remain in the home, until nothing is left once the full period passes.

The risk is moving before that point. Sell or leave before the forgiveness window closes, and whatever hasn't been forgiven yet is still your debt, so it pays to line the period up with how long you plan to stay put. Certain agencies leave the timeline unstated. Get that figure in writing ahead of signing.

Most programs cap your household income, and income caps can come on top of the first-time buyer rule. That ceiling is usually framed as a percentage of area median income, the midpoint household income for your county or metro, which HUD publishes annually. The 2026 figures came out on 1 May 2026, spanning 4,764 areas, with the national median for a 4-person family set at $107,900.

Where you live can sit far from that national number. Cambridge, Massachusetts has a median family income of $164,600 for a family of 4. A household there making $98,000 lands at 60% of the local median, comfortably below HUD's low-income limit of $137,100, and would pass an 80% cap, which equals $131,680 for 4 people.

Applying straight to the state agency is rare. On their own program pages, 46 of the 51 agencies route buyers to an approved or participating lender, and that lender manages the mortgage and the assistance as one process. This site is not a lender; a request you make here is passed to 1 lender familiar with these programs.

Since the lender is the one filing your application, showing up already knowing your target program, its income cap and its first-time rule makes things smoother. Funding can open and close during the year, so check the agency's page for the program's current status before you count on the money. The current status on the agency page can matter just as much as the dollar amount.