What each program actually requires

Conventional is the default for buyers with reasonable credit and some money to put down. It's the only common program where the mortgage insurance comes off by itself, and over thirty years that's worth more than most people expect when they're comparing payments in month one.

First-time buyers can go as low as 3% down through HomeReady or Home Possible, as long as household income is at or below 80% of the area median. Repeat buyers start at 5%.

FHA exists for buyers whose credit or debt load doesn't fit conventional yet. The down payment is lower, the credit requirement is lower, and the underwriting is more forgiving on debt-to-income, especially where there are compensating factors like reserves or a documented rent history.

The tradeoff is the mortgage insurance. Put less than 10% down and the annual MIP stays on the loan for as long as you keep it. The usual exit is a refinance into conventional once you have the equity and the credit to support it.

No down payment, no monthly mortgage insurance, and with full entitlement there's no loan limit at all. There isn't another program that does all three of those things, and most veterans I work with are using less of it than they're entitled to.

There's enough to say about entitlement, the funding fee, and what listing agents get wrong about VA offers that it has its own page.

VA loans in detail

USDA is 100% financing for homes in designated eligible areas, and those areas cover more of Georgia than most people assume. Gwinnett proper mostly doesn't qualify, but a good deal of what's around it does.

No down payment, and the monthly fee is meaningfully lower than FHA's. The constraint is income: eligibility runs on total household income rather than just the borrowers' income, and it's capped at 115% of the area median.

Anything above the conforming loan limit is a jumbo loan. For a single-family home anywhere in Georgia in 2026, that means a loan above $832,750.

There's no Fannie, Freddie, FHA or VA standing behind jumbo lending, which means there's no published guideline. Down payment, credit, reserves, and documentation are all set by the individual investor, and they differ from one another a lot. This is the category where having access to many lenders is worth the most.

Renovation financing lets you borrow against what the house will be worth once the work is done, instead of what it's worth the day you buy it. The funds sit in escrow and get released to the contractor in draws.

FHA's version is the 203(k), in a limited and a standard flavor. Fannie Mae's is HomeStyle, which is more flexible on what counts as an eligible improvement and covers accessory dwelling units.

If you write off enough that your tax returns don't reflect what you actually take home, a bank statement program qualifies you on deposits instead of on net income. Same idea behind asset depletion, 1099-only, and profit-and-loss programs.

These are non-QM loans. There's no agency behind any of it, so every number below is set by the individual investor and varies more than it does on agency products.

A DSCR loan qualifies the property rather than you. The lender compares the rent against the full monthly payment and doesn't look at your tax returns, your W-2s, or your personal debt-to-income at all. Most allow the property to be held in an LLC.

The ratio is gross monthly rent divided by PITIA, which is principal, interest, taxes, insurance and any association dues. Above 1.00 the property covers itself. Below that, some lenders will still do it with more money down.

Down payment assistance isn't one thing. Three different structures get called by the same name, and the difference between them matters far more than the size of the number.

A grant is money you don't pay back. No lien is recorded, and there's nothing to settle when you sell. Grants are the rarest of the three and usually the smallest.

A forgivable second is a lien recorded behind your first mortgage that gets written down over a set period — often five or ten years. Stay past the term and it goes away. Sell or refinance before then and you owe some or all of it back, usually prorated by how long you stayed.

A repayable second is a real second mortgage. Some carry a monthly payment from day one. Others sit silent and come due in full the moment you sell or refinance. Either way it's borrowed money and it shows up on your payoff.

The 3.5% and 5% you see quoted are almost always the size of the assistance expressed as a percentage of your loan amount, not a flat dollar figure. Bigger isn't automatically better: a 5% repayable second and a 3.5% forgivable second are two different trades, and which one wins depends entirely on how long you plan to stay.

If you're buying the building your business operates out of, SBA is usually the cheapest way in. The 7(a) program is the flexible one and covers acquisition, working capital and debt refinance. The 504 program is built specifically for real estate and long-lived equipment, and it uses a three-way structure between a bank, a certified development company and you.

Outside SBA there's bridge, multifamily, and conventional commercial through banks and credit unions. Those live on the commercial side.