What down payment assistance is available in Texas?
Texas runs homebuyer assistance through two separate statewide bodies, plus city and county programs on top. TDHCA — the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs — offers My First Texas Home, My Choice Texas Home and the Texas Mortgage Credit Certificate Program under The Texas Homebuyer Program brand. TSAHC — the Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation — runs Homes for Texas Heroes and the Home Sweet Texas Home Loan Program.
That two-body structure is the first thing that confuses people. They are not competing versions of the same thing, and being turned down by one does not mean anything about the other.
What is down payment assistance, really?
It is help with the up-front cash needed to buy, structured either as a second lien or as assistance that is forgiven over time. TSAHC, for example, lets you take its assistance as a grant that does not have to be repaid, or as a deferred forgivable second lien that only has to be repaid if you sell or refinance within three years (Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation, page checked 26 August 2026).
The important thing to understand is the structure, not the headline. Assistance that must be repaid on sale behaves very differently from assistance that is forgiven if you stay put, and which one you take should be a deliberate decision.
Am I eligible if I have owned a home before?
Possibly. TDHCA’s My Choice Texas Home page says the program is for everyone and that you do not have to be a first-time homebuyer to qualify, and TSAHC states plainly that it helps both first-time and repeat buyers. Even My First Texas Home, which is aimed at first-time buyers, notes exceptions in targeted areas and for qualified veterans.
People rule themselves out on assumptions more often than programs rule them out on criteria.
Who counts as a Texas Hero?
TSAHC’s Homes for Texas Heroes Program lists specific occupations rather than a vague notion of public service. Its page names professional educators — teachers, teacher aides, librarians, counsellors and school nurses — along with nursing and allied health faculty, first responders including police officers, firefighters and EMS personnel, public security officers, corrections and juvenile corrections officers, and veterans and active military (TSAHC, page checked 26 August 2026).
If you are on that list, it is worth checking before you look at anything else.
How much can I earn and still qualify?
TDHCA publishes a combined limits table covering both earnings and purchase price, and it changes. On the table effective 13 July 2026, the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land area limits were $104,000 for one- or two-person households and $119,600 for households of three or more, with a purchase price limit of $566,354 in non-targeted areas and $692,211 in targeted areas.
For context, the median price of a single-family home sold in the Houston market was $340,000 in July 2026 (Houston Association of REALTORS, July 2026 Housing Market Update, released 12 August 2026). The limits are not as tight as most people assume before they look them up.
What about Houston and Harris County programs?
They are separate from the state programs and they have hard geographic boundaries. The City of Houston’s Homebuyer Assistance Program page states assistance of up to $75,000 for households at or below eighty percent of the area median income who have not owned a home in the last three years, on a property that pays taxes to the City of Houston. Harris County’s Down Payment Assistance Program is for properties in unincorporated Harris County in qualified census tracts, with a maximum award of $40,000 (Harris County Housing and Community Development, page checked 26 August 2026).
Read those two boundaries carefully. A house inside the Houston city limits is not eligible for the county program, and a house in unincorporated Harris County is not eligible for the city one. That single distinction accounts for more disappointment than any income limit.
One Texas rule worth knowing
Texas is a community property state — under the Texas Constitution, Article XVI, Section 15, property acquired during a marriage is community property unless it came by gift, devise or descent. Separately, Article XVI, Section 50 gives the Texas homestead unusual protections and sets conditions on lending against it.
Neither of these normally changes whether you qualify. Both can change who has to sign and when, which is why I raise them at the start rather than the week of closing.
What actually stops people
In my experience it is rarely eligibility. It is that nobody sat down with them early enough to sequence things properly — checking program limits before house-hunting, understanding how assistance interacts with the offer, and knowing what the listing agent will ask.
How to use this page
Read it, then have a fifteen-minute conversation before you start looking. Program details and funding availability change, and TDHCA, TSAHC, the City of Houston and Harris County are each the authority on their own current terms. My job is to help you work out which route fits and to make sure your offer is taken seriously when you find the house.