Down Payment Assistance for Southwest Riverside County Buyers

“I don’t have 20% down” is the single most common thing I hear from first-time buyers, and it’s almost never actually a dealbreaker. Between low-down-payment loan programs and California’s own down payment assistance options, most buyers have more paths in than they think.

CalHFA MyHome Assistance Program

MyHome is a deferred-payment second loan from the California Housing Finance Agency that helps cover your down payment and/or closing costs: up to 3.5% of the purchase price on an FHA loan, or 3% on a conventional loan. “Deferred payment” means you’re not making monthly payments on it; it gets repaid later, typically when you sell, refinance, or pay off the first mortgage.

To use it, you need to:

• Qualify as a first-time buyer (generally meaning you haven’t owned or occupied a home in the last three years)
• Work with a CalHFA-approved lender for both your first mortgage and the MyHome second, and I’m one of them
• Complete a homebuyer education course through an approved counseling organization (this is a real requirement, not a formality, and it’s genuinely useful if you’ve never gone through the process before)

MyHome can also be layered with CalHFA’s other assistance programs in some cases, which is exactly the kind of stacking a generic online calculator won’t walk you through. It’s worth a real conversation before you assume you know what you qualify for.

Dream For All Shared Appreciation Loan

Dream For All is a different kind of program. It can provide a larger amount of down payment assistance (historically up to 20% of the purchase price), but in exchange, the state shares in a percentage of your home’s appreciation when you eventually sell or refinance. It’s specifically aimed at first-generation home buyers.

The important thing to know about Dream For All: it runs in funded application rounds, not as an always-open program. It opens for a window of time each cycle, and once that round’s funding is allocated, it closes until the next round. If you’re interested, ask me for its current status rather than assuming it’s open. By the time you read this, the most recent round may already be closed.

What this means for your actual numbers

I’m intentionally not stating specific income limits, exact assistance percentages for every scenario, or current interest rates here. All of these are set by CalHFA and change over time, and a stale number in an article is worse than no number at all. What I can tell you precisely, for your specific situation, is whether you qualify and what it actually looks like on your numbers.

This pairs naturally with FHA or conventional financing, and with the first-time buyer program page for the bigger picture of what’s available.

Curious whether you qualify for down payment assistance? Reach out below and I’ll walk through it with you.