Do Residents Qualify for a Physician Mortgage? (2026 Complete Guide)

Do Residents Actually Qualify for a Physician Mortgage?

Yes. Most physician mortgage programs explicitly extend eligibility to medical residents, fellows, and interns who hold an MD, DO, DDS, DMD, or equivalent degree. You do not need to be board-certified or finished with training to apply, though some lenders ask for a training license (Flagstar names residents with an educational license; Truist names licensed residents, interns, and fellows).

The logic from a lender's perspective is straightforward. A physician in residency has an unusually predictable income trajectory. You will finish training. You will become an attending. You will earn significantly more money. Physician mortgage programs are built around that expected income rather than your current debt level.

That said, eligibility as a resident is not identical to eligibility as an attending. There are specific ways that lenders handle your income, your student loans, and your employment documentation that you need to understand before you start shopping for a home.

How Lenders Handle Resident Income

This is where physician mortgage programs for residents diverge most significantly. There are two primary approaches lenders take, and understanding which one a specific lender uses matters a lot before you apply.

Approach 1: Qualify on your current resident salary

Some lenders calculate your borrowing power based on your actual resident salary, which averaged roughly $68,000–$85,000 from PGY-1 through PGY-6 in the AAMC's 2025 survey, depending on your training year and region. This limits how much house you can buy during training but requires no future employment contract. For residents who want to buy modestly in a lower cost-of-living city, this approach is straightforward.

On a $75,000 resident salary with student loans excluded from the debt-to-income calculation, you might qualify for roughly a $300,000–$400,000 loan at a 7 percent rate, depending on your other debts, property taxes and insurance, and the lender's specific DTI limit.

Approach 2: Qualify on your future attending salary using a signed contract

This is the more powerful option for residents who are close to finishing training and already have an attending position lined up. Several major physician mortgage lenders will underwrite your loan based on your signed employment contract, not your current resident income. Your borrowing capacity is calculated on $200,000–$400,000 or more in expected attending salary even before your first attending paycheck clears.

This approach comes with a timing requirement discussed below — lenders that publish one, such as Huntington, BMO, and Bank of America, allow your start date to be up to 90 days after closing. But for fourth-year residents or fellows who have matched and signed an offer, it opens up significantly more purchasing power.

How Student Loans Are Treated for Residents

Student loan treatment is one of the most important reasons physician mortgages exist — and one of the most misunderstood aspects of how they work for residents specifically.

Conventional underwriting uses a documented income-driven payment when you have one. The trouble is deferment, forbearance, and $0 payments, which are common in training. If $250,000 in student loans is deferred or in forbearance, Fannie Mae lets the lender count 1 percent of the balance — $2,500 per month — or a fully amortizing payment. Freddie Mac and FHA count 0.5 percent ($1,250) whenever the credit report shows a $0 payment. Either figure can disqualify a resident from a conventional loan entirely.

Physician mortgage lenders can use a different approach, though few publish it.

• •For residents with deferred loans: Some programs exclude deferred student loans from the DTI calculation. Truist does if the loans will stay deferred at least 12 months after closing, and Bank of America says it can often exclude deferred loans with documentation. Other lenders use your actual IBR or income-driven repayment plan payment, which for a resident might be $0–$300 per month. Either approach dramatically improves your qualifying debt-to-income ratio.
• •For residents qualifying on future attending income: Student loans are generally counted at your documented income-driven payment, the same way Fannie Mae counts them. On an attending income of $250,000, that payment will be higher than it was in residency, and you should ask the lender whether it will use your current payment or estimate the payment at your new income.

To put it in concrete terms: a resident with $240,000 in student loans in deferment would be counted at $2,400 per month under Fannie Mae's 1 percent rule, or $1,200 under Freddie Mac's and FHA's 0.5 percent rule. A physician program that excludes those loans counts $0. If the same resident is instead on an income-driven plan paying a documented $200 a month, every program, conventional included, can count the $200. That single difference can determine whether you qualify for a home or not.

The 90-Day Rule and Other Timing Requirements

This is the piece of information most residents miss — and missing it can cause a closing to fall apart at the last minute.

When a physician mortgage lender qualifies you on your future attending salary using a signed employment contract, they require that your contract start date be within a specific window of your closing date. Huntington, BMO, and Bank of America publish 90 days; Truist, Flagstar, and KeyBank don't publish a window, and Bank of America also asks for extra reserves to cover your debts until the start date.

What this means in practice: if you are a fourth-year resident finishing in June and you want to close on a home in May using your July attending contract, you need to confirm that your lender's specific policy allows a start date that far out from closing. Some lenders may require a tighter window. You need to ask this question directly before you fall in love with a house.

The match season timeline for residents

For residents who have matched and have a signed contract for fellowship or their first attending position, the ideal window to begin shopping and get pre-approved is 90 to 120 days before your training ends. This gives you enough time to find a home, go under contract, complete the underwriting process, and close before or shortly after your new position begins.

Can residents buy without a future contract?

Yes — using the current salary approach described above. There is no timing requirement in this scenario because you are qualifying on income you already earn. The limitation is that your purchasing power is tied to your resident salary rather than your future attending income.

A word of caution: do not start your home search assuming you can close before you have a signed employment contract in hand. Some residents begin looking at homes during their final year expecting their attending contract to materialize in time, only to find the contract is delayed or the lender's timing window does not accommodate their situation. Get pre-approved first, confirm the lender's specific timing requirements, and then start looking at homes.

What Residents Need to Apply

The documentation requirements for residents applying for physician mortgages are similar to a standard mortgage application, with a few key differences. Here is what most lenders will ask for:

• •Medical degree verification — A diploma copy or transcript confirming you hold an MD, DO, DDS, DMD, or other eligible degree. This is what establishes your eligibility for the physician program in the first place.
• •Current residency program contract or offer letter — Confirms your current employment and resident status. Required for current-salary qualification.
• •Future employment contract, if qualifying on attending salary — Must be signed, not verbal. Most lenders require a firm start date on the contract. An unsigned letter of intent is generally not sufficient.
• •Recent pay stubs (2–3 months) — Verifies your current income even if you are qualifying on a future salary.
• •Two years of tax returns, if available — Some lenders waive this for residents who are still in training and have limited tax history. Ask your loan officer whether this is required.
• •Student loan statements — Confirms your actual monthly payment obligations. Having your IBR enrollment documentation available helps demonstrate your real payment amount versus the 1 percent conventional calculation.
• •Bank statements (2–3 months) — Lenders want to verify you have enough cash to cover closing costs. Even with a 0 percent down payment, closing costs typically run 2 to 5 percent of the purchase price, or $8,000–$20,000 on a $400,000 home.
• •Credit report authorization — Few programs publish a minimum credit score (Bank of America describes its Doctor Loan as for borrowers with excellent credit), so ask each lender what score it requires.

One thing worth emphasizing: physician mortgage programs are more flexible than conventional loans on many criteria, but credit history is not one of them. If your score is weak, spend 6 to 12 months paying down credit card balances and ensuring clean payment history before applying. A higher score also gets you meaningfully better interest rates.

Rates, Down Payments, and Loan Limits for Residents

Down payment

Most physician mortgage programs offer 0 percent down options. Some lenders require a small minimum down payment above certain loan thresholds. For residents, the 0 percent down option is particularly valuable because most are not in a position to save a significant down payment on a training salary.

The published tiers are similar across the national lenders we track: Truist, BMO, TD Bank, Flagstar, and Huntington offer 0 percent down up to $1 million and 5 percent down up to $1.5 million ($1.75 million at Huntington), and all but Flagstar go higher with about 10 percent down. Bank of America has no 0 percent option; it starts at 3 percent down up to $850,000. For residents, Truist publishes only a $1 million maximum, and BMO caps financing at 95 percent in eight jurisdictions, including California and Florida. These thresholds vary by lender and program; our lender comparison has each one.

Interest rates

None of the physician programs we track publishes its rates, so the only way to know whether you are paying a premium over a conventional loan is to get quotes. Freddie Mac notes that lenders offering loans without PMI often charge higher interest rates in exchange. For many residents, eliminating PMI can outweigh a slightly higher rate. Freddie Mac puts PMI at $30 to $70 a month for every $100,000 borrowed — on a $500,000 loan, about $1,800 to $4,200 per year until you can have it removed, which you can request once your balance is scheduled to reach 80 percent of the home's original value (it ends automatically at 78 percent, under federal law).

Residents who plan to stay in the same city for only 3 to 4 years — the length of their training — should consider an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) rather than a 30-year fixed rate. A 5- or 7-year ARM offers a lower initial rate that is fixed for 5 to 7 years before adjusting; some physician programs, such as Flagstar's, offer only ARMs (5/6, 7/6, and 10/6). If you plan to move or refinance before the adjustment period, the monthly savings can be significant.

Loan limits

Physician mortgage programs generally offer higher loan limits than conventional conforming loans. The 2026 conforming loan limit is $832,750 in most of the country, up to $1,249,125 in high-cost areas. Physician mortgage programs typically extend to $1 million to $1.5 million at low down payments, with some lenders going to $2 million or more for borrowers with strong profiles.

Should Residents Actually Buy? The Honest Answer

Just because you can qualify for a physician mortgage as a resident does not mean buying is always the right financial decision. The answer depends heavily on your specific situation.

Buying during residency makes sense if:

• •You are reasonably confident you will stay in the same city for your next position, whether that is fellowship or your first attending role. The transaction costs of buying and selling a home — closing costs, agent commissions, moving expenses — can easily consume 6 to 8 percent of the home's value. If you sell in 3 years, you have likely not built enough equity to break even, let alone profit.
• •The monthly cost of owning is genuinely lower than renting an equivalent space. This varies dramatically by market. In smaller cities with affordable housing, this can be true. In expensive markets like San Francisco, Boston, or New York, the math almost never works in favor of buying during residency.
• •You have enough cash to cover closing costs and still maintain a financial cushion. Even at 0 percent down, closing costs on a $400,000 home can run $8,000 to $20,000 (2 to 5 percent, per the CFPB). Going to closing with nothing left in your bank account is a precarious position for someone on a resident's salary.
• •Your partner has stable income in the same city, reducing the relocation risk and giving you more confidence that you will stay for long enough to make buying worthwhile.

Renting probably makes more sense if:

• •You are applying to fellowship programs and may relocate in 1 to 2 years. The uncertainty alone makes buying a significant financial risk.
• •You are in year 1 or 2 of a long residency program and your eventual attending position location is genuinely unknown.
• •You are in a high cost-of-living city where buying on a resident salary means severely overextending or purchasing a property too small for your actual needs.

As a general rule of thumb, buying a home makes financial sense when you expect to stay for at least 5 years. The transaction costs of buying and selling typically eat the first 2 to 3 years of equity gains. If your residency plus any anticipated fellowship totals less than 4 to 5 years in the same city, run the rent-versus-buy math for residents carefully before committing.

Lenders That Accept Residents in 2026

Several national lenders and many regional banks have programs that explicitly include residents and fellows. Among the programs we have reviewed, Truist, Bank of America, BMO, Huntington, TD Bank, KeyBank, and Flagstar (for residents with an educational license) all name residents; regionally, Regions, Fifth Third, and SouthState do too.

The key point is not to assume all programs work identically. Before applying anywhere, confirm directly with the loan officer whether their program accepts your specific degree type and training year, allows qualification on future attending salary using your contract, and what their specific timing window is relative to your start date.

For a full comparison of physician mortgage lenders by state with current rate data and program details, see our physician mortgage lender comparison page.

Sources

Lender terms for Huntington, TD Bank, KeyBank, BMO, and Flagstar come from each lender's program page as recorded in our lender reviews, linked above.

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2. Selling Guide B3-6-05, Monthly Debt Obligations (student loans), Fannie Mae. Accessed September 27, 2026.
3. Selling Guide B3-6-02, Debt-to-Income Ratios (36% to 45% manual, 50% automated; used in the calculator note), Fannie Mae. Accessed September 27, 2026.
4. Loan Product Advisor Feedback Message Updates: Student Loan Payment Update (effective September 28, 2025), Freddie Mac. Accessed September 27, 2026.
5. Mortgagee Letter 2021-13: Student Loan Payment Calculation of Monthly Obligation, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Accessed September 27, 2026.
6. Resident physician pay still rising, but growth trails inflation (AAMC 2025 stipend averages by training year), American Medical Association. Accessed September 27, 2026.
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