Can H1B Holders Get a Conventional Mortgage?

Short answer: yes. H1B holders qualify for conventional and jumbo mortgages on the same terms as US citizens, for both primary residences and rental properties. This isn’t a workaround, a niche program, or a smaller pool of lenders willing to take a chance on you. Fannie Mae’s own Selling Guide classifies H1B holders as “non-permanent resident aliens” and directs lenders to underwrite them exactly like citizens once legal presence is documented. If you’ve come across advice that treats conventional financing as a long shot for visa holders, that advice is either outdated or was never accurate to begin with.

What “Legally Present” Actually Means to a Lender

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

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

That’s the entire requirement. No citizenship clause, no minimum years-in-the-US rule baked into the GSE guidelines themselves, and no rate markup written in for being on H1B instead of holding a Green Card. Individual lenders can still stack their own overlays on top of this (more on that below), but the underlying eligibility rule treats you no differently.

The Real Gating Factors Aren’t Your Visa

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

• Credit score. 620+ is the common floor for conventional loans; 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 anything under 20% triggers PMI.
• Continuance of income. Lenders want reasonable evidence your income will keep coming — for W-2 employment this is rarely a sticking point, but if a specific income source needs a continuance letter, a slow-moving employer can stall an otherwise clean closing timeline.

Worked example: Say your gross income is $18,000/month ($216,000/year — realistic for a mid-to-senior tech role), you’re carrying $800/month in existing debt payments, and you’re eyeing a $1,100,000 home with 20% down. Principal, interest, tax, and insurance on the remaining $880,000 loan runs 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 never enters the math anywhere in that calculation. Plug in your own income, proposed payment, and debts below to see where you 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 — covering most of the Bay Area, Seattle, NYC, and other tech-heavy metros (FHFA, November 2025). Anything above your county’s limit needs a jumbo loan.

Take the example above: a $1,100,000 home with an $880,000 loan clears the $832,750 baseline, so in a standard-cost county this is a jumbo loan, not a conforming one. Jumbo loans don’t get sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, so each lender writes its own underwriting standard instead of following the GSE rulebook. 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 it is visa-specific — it’s the same bar a citizen clears for the same loan size. The visa determines which documents you submit, not whether you’re eligible in the first place.

Buying a Rental or Investment Property

Nothing in Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac guidelines stops non-permanent resident aliens from financing a second home or investment property. Occupancy type changes the down payment and reserve math exactly the 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 on top of the down payment and closing costs — money that has to actually be sitting in an account, not just theoretically available somewhere.

One real variance worth knowing about: even though the GSE rule itself doesn’t treat non-permanent residents differently, some portfolio and jumbo lenders informally ask H1B/L1 borrowers for a bigger reserve cushion than they’d ask a citizen at the same loan amount, on the reasoning that a job loss combined with a visa complication is a compounding risk. It 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 even more for a rental purchase than for a primary residence.

RSU and Variable Income

If part of your compensation is RSUs — common at the large tech employers sponsoring H1B roles — lenders don’t count your target comp or unvested grant value. They want a 2-year history of shares that have actually vested, backed up by grant agreements, the vesting schedule, and brokerage statements showing the shares were received. Early in a role, before you hit that 2-year mark, 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 without a Social Security Number — typically undocumented residents or foreign nationals without US work authorization. H1B status requires an SSN as a condition of legal employment, so none of that applies to you. If you’re seeing H1B and ITIN loans discussed in the same breath somewhere, that’s worth ignoring; they solve two entirely different documentation problems, and yours got 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 it should: 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.