Can H1B Holders Get a Conventional Mortgage?

Yes — H1B holders qualify for conventional and jumbo mortgages on the same terms as U.S. citizens, for primary residences and rental properties alike. This isn’t a workaround, a niche program, or a smaller pool of lenders willing to take a risk on you: Fannie Mae’s own Selling Guide classifies H1B holders as “non-permanent resident aliens” and instructs lenders to underwrite them identically to citizens once legal presence is documented. If you’ve been reading advice that treats conventional financing as a long shot for visa holders, that advice is out of date or was never accurate.

What “Legally Present” Actually Means to a Lender

Fannie Mae’s rule (Selling Guide B2-2-02) is short: mortgages to non-citizens who are lawful permanent or non-permanent residents are purchased and securitized “under the same terms that are available to U.S. citizens.” Freddie Mac’s guidelines say the same thing. To be considered legally present, you need:

• A Social Security Number.
• Current, verified immigration status — your I-797 approval notice, unexpired visa stamp, or other USCIS documentation.

That’s it. There’s no citizenship requirement, no minimum years-in-the-US requirement written into the GSE rules themselves, and no rate markup baked into the guidelines for being on H1B instead of holding a Green Card. Individual lenders can still layer their own overlays on top (more on that below), but the underlying eligibility rule doesn’t treat you differently.

The Real Gating Factors Aren’t Your Visa

What actually determines approval is the same for an H1B holder as it is for a citizen:

• Credit score. 620+ is the common floor for conventional; 700+ gets meaningfully better pricing.
• Debt-to-income ratio. Generally capped around 43–45% for conventional loans.
• Down payment. As low as 3–5% for conventional, though under 20% triggers PMI.
• Continuance of income. Lenders want reasonable evidence your income will continue — for W-2 employment this is rarely an issue, but if a specific income source needs a continuance letter, some employers are slow to produce one, which can stall a closing timeline that otherwise had nothing wrong with it.

Worked example: Say your gross income is $18,000/month ($216,000/year — realistic for a mid-to-senior tech role), you have $800/month in existing debt payments, and you’re targeting a $1,100,000 home with 20% down. Principal, interest, tax, and insurance on the remaining $880,000 loan run roughly $6,200/month.

($6,200 + $800) ÷ $18,000 = 38.9% DTI

That clears the typical 43–45% conventional ceiling with room to spare — the visa doesn’t enter the calculation anywhere in this math. Swap in your own income, proposed payment, and existing debts below to see where you actually land.

Jumbo Loans Work the Same Way

The 2026 baseline conforming loan limit is $832,750 for most counties (up from $806,500 in 2025), and $1,249,125 in designated high-cost areas — which covers most of the Bay Area, Seattle, NYC, and similar tech-heavy metros (FHFA, November 2025). Anything above your county’s limit needs a jumbo loan.

Using the example above — a $1,100,000 home with an $880,000 loan — that loan exceeds the $832,750 baseline, so in a standard-cost county this is a jumbo loan, not conforming. Jumbo loans aren’t sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, so each lender sets its own underwriting standard rather than following the GSE rulebook directly. In practice, jumbo lenders commonly want:

• 2 years of U.S. credit history and 2 years of U.S. tax returns.
• Larger cash reserves (6–12 months of payments isn’t unusual).
• A credit score comfortably above the conventional minimum.

None of this is visa-specific — it’s the same bar a citizen would clear for the same loan size. The visa affects which documents you submit, not whether you’re eligible.

Buying a Rental or Investment Property

Nothing in Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac guidelines restricts non-permanent resident aliens from financing a second home or investment property — occupancy type changes the down payment and reserve math the same way it would for anyone else:

• Primary residence: as low as 3–5% down.
• Second home: typically 10%+ down.
• Investment property: typically 15–25% down, plus reserve requirements.

Worked example: A $500,000 rental property at 25% down needs $125,000 down, leaving a $375,000 loan. If the lender requires 6 months of reserves on the total PITI payment (say $2,500/month), that’s another $15,000 in liquid reserves beyond the down payment and closing costs — money that has to be sitting in an account, not just theoretically available.

One real variance to know about: while the GSE rule itself doesn’t treat non-permanent residents differently, some portfolio and jumbo lenders informally ask H1B/L1 borrowers for a larger reserve cushion than they’d ask a citizen at the same loan amount, reasoning that a job loss combined with a visa complication is a compounding risk. This isn’t universal, and it isn’t written into any GSE guideline — it’s lender-level discretion, which is exactly why shopping more than one lender matters more for a rental purchase than it does for a primary residence.

RSU and Variable Income

If part of your compensation is RSUs — common at large tech employers sponsoring H1B roles — lenders don’t use your target comp or unvested grant value. They want a 2-year history of shares that have actually vested, documented through grant agreements, the vesting schedule, and brokerage statements showing the shares were received. If you’re early in a role and haven’t hit that 2-year mark yet, expect your qualifying income to be based on base salary alone until the RSU history catches up.

Why This Article Doesn’t Cover ITIN Loans

ITIN mortgage programs exist for borrowers who don’t have a Social Security Number — typically undocumented residents or foreign nationals without U.S. work authorization. H1B status requires an SSN as a condition of legal employment, so this simply doesn’t apply to you. If you’re seeing H1B and ITIN loans discussed in the same breath elsewhere, that’s a conflation worth ignoring; they’re solving for two different documentation problems, and yours was solved the day you got your SSN.

What Changed: FHA Is No Longer an Option

As of May 25, 2025, HUD eliminated FHA loan eligibility for non-permanent resident borrowers entirely (Mortgagee Letter 2025-09) — FHA financing is now limited to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. For most H1B buyers this changes less than it sounds like: FHA’s low conforming-adjacent loan limits made it a poor fit for most tech-market home prices anyway, and conventional was already the more commonly used path. Still, worth knowing so you’re not chasing a pre-approval path that no longer exists.

What to Do Next

Run your own numbers through the tool above, then shop at least two or three lenders before committing — the GSE eligibility rule is fixed, but overlay requirements (reserve cushions, credit history depth, jumbo thresholds) vary enough between lenders that a second quote is usually worth the extra hour. Before you start touring homes, our checklist on what to do before house shopping covers the documentation prep that makes preapproval go smoothly.

Educational overview based on the Fannie Mae Selling Guide and current HUD guidance — not lending advice. Individual lender overlays vary; confirm current requirements directly with your lender before making decisions based on loan size or timeline.