Buying your first home, without the guesswork

The three numbers that decide everything

Everything else is detail. A lender is asking three questions, and you can answer all of them before you ever fill in a form.

How much cash you have. Not how much you need for 20%, which you do not. The real floor is 3% on a conventional loan for qualifying first-time buyers and 3.5% on FHA, and it drops to zero on VA and USDA loans if you are eligible. Then add closing costs and prepaid items, which is the part people forget. That full number is your cash to close, and it is the one to ask about.

Your credit score. 620 opens conventional, 580 opens FHA at 3.5% down, 640 opens Michigan's down payment assistance. Scores between 500 and 579 can still do FHA at 10% down. If you are close to a line, that is a reason to call, not a reason to wait: the fix is often small and specific.

What you already owe. Your debt-to-income ratio is every monthly payment, including the new mortgage, divided by your gross monthly income. Conventional guidelines generally allow up to 45% to 50% depending on the rest of the file. A car loan you are nearly done with can matter more than you would think, in both directions.

Money toward the down payment, if you need it

If you can handle a monthly payment but have not been able to out-save rent, this is the part that changes the answer. Michigan's MSHDA MI 10K DPA offers up to $10,000 in hundreds of designated ZIP codes, with a standard tier around $7,500 elsewhere, as of 2026. It is a second mortgage at 0% interest with no monthly payment, repaid only when you sell, refinance, or pay off the first loan.

Because there is no monthly payment, it does not count against the debt-to-income ratio above. The money can go toward the down payment, closing costs, and prepaids. Typical requirements are a 640 credit score, income limits that vary by county and household size, a sales price limit around $453,000 statewide, and a homebuyer education course before closing. Program terms genuinely change year to year, so we verify every one of these at application. The full down payment assistance page has the detail, including how the other states we lend in compare.

The programs first-time buyers actually use

Six of them, in roughly the order we would walk you through them. Nobody here is tied to one program, so this is a menu rather than a recommendation until we know your numbers.

What happens, in order

1. A conversation, before anything else. Five to ten minutes on income, credit, timeline, and how much you want to spend as opposed to how much you could. You will know where you stand at the end of it.
2. Pre-approval. This is the document that makes your offer real to a seller, and it is worth having before you tour anything you might actually want.
3. Shopping, with a number you trust. Your agent works the market, we stay reachable for the "what would this one cost me" questions, which come at odd hours.
4. Offer accepted, then underwriting. Appraisal, documents, the parts that feel slow. One team handles your file start to finish and tells you what is happening before you have to ask.
5. Closing. You get the keys. If you closed with us you also get the moving trailer for the weekend.

More on how we work, and why step one is a conversation rather than an application, on the about page.

Worth reading before you shop

• First-Time Homebuyer’s Guide to the Mortgage Process
• Understanding Mortgage Pre-Approval: Why It’s Important
• What Are Closing Costs and How to Prepare
• Your Guide to a First-Time Homebuyer Mortgage in Grand Rapids

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