Buy a home, refinance, or use your equity.

It depends on the loan. FHA has the most flexible credit standards of the agency programs, conventional sits higher, and VA sets no minimum of its own though individual lenders do. There are also routes below the usual thresholds. They are narrower, but they are real.

Less than most people assume, and for some buyers the down payment can be covered entirely by an assistance program. The requirement differs by loan type, and the assistance programs have their own rules, so the numbers live on the pages where the full terms are disclosed alongside them. Separately from the down payment, you should still expect to pay earnest money, the appraisal fee and an inspection out of pocket.

The common ones, meaning conventional, FHA, VA, USDA and jumbo, plus physician loans, down payment assistance, bank statement and 1099 programs for the self-employed, DSCR and fix-and-flip for investors, renovation and construction, manufactured housing, non-warrantable condos, ITIN, foreign national, bridge loans, HELOCs and reverse mortgages. If your situation is unusual, it is worth asking rather than assuming.

Underwriters answer this with one number: debt-to-income, your total monthly obligations divided by your gross monthly income. It counts car loans, student loans, credit card minimums and child support. It does not count utilities, groceries or phone bills. Whatever is left after those obligations, minus taxes and insurance, is what supports a loan. Our affordability calculator runs that calculation the way an underwriter would, and a loan officer will produce the real figure from your credit report and income documents.

Yes, and often on better terms than you expect. Agency underwriting reads two years of tax returns, which routinely understates what a self-employed borrower actually earns after deductions. Where that is the problem, a bank statement loan qualifies you on deposits instead.