Plain-English guidance on physician mortgages, written for people who do not have time to become mortgage experts.
Truist finances 100% up to $1.5M, 95% to $2M and 90% to $2.5M, with no mortgage insurance, a 720 minimum score and coverage in 47 states.
Fulton Bank publishes zero down to $1.5 million, no PMI, no reserves required, and a written rule that student loans deferred 12 months or longer stay out of the credit decision. Available in six states.
U.S. Bank offers a doctor loan but publishes no terms for it. Here are the commonly reported down payment tiers, where the published reports contradict each other, and the four things to get in writing.
BOK Financial’s Advanced Medical Professional program offers up to 100% financing, excludes student loans deferred past 12 months from DTI, and is one of the few physician programs that includes CRNAs.
Most physician mortgage mistakes are ordinary borrowing errors that a doctor loan makes more expensive, because the program removes the down payment and the student loan drag on debt-to-income, the two things that normally slow a buyer down.
Three different numbers get called closing costs, and only one of them is what you wire on closing day. This is a section by section read of the Loan Estimate, with the charges that legally cannot increase separated from the ones that can rise by any amount, plus what lender credits and seller credits actually do, why a zero down loan still requires cash, and how to compare two estimates without fooling yourself.
A physician loan usually makes buying during residency possible. Whether it is wise depends on how long you will be in that city, because round-trip transaction costs run 8% to 15% of the price.
The mortgage process is the same for a physician as for anyone else, but the parts that break are different. This is the full sequence, from getting your documents together to closing day, with the physician specific failure points marked where they actually happen: a start date that moves, student loan documentation that does not match the credit report, gift funds without a paper trail, and new credit pulled mid underwriting.
Adjustable structures show up more often in physician programs than in the conventional market, and some programs offer nothing else. Here is how to read an ARM quote, compute the capped maximum payment, and set a fixed quote next to an adjustable one honestly.
A physician program may approve you at a 50% debt-to-income ratio. A comfortable housing payment is closer to 28% of gross income. Here is how to find the number in between.
