What Down Payment Help Exists in Florida Right Now?

By Douglas Wilkerson, Mortgage Broker, NMLS #1680719 | November 14, 2026

The Short Answer

Florida will put up to $35,000 toward your down payment and closing costs through the Hometown Heroes program — and Jacksonville has its own program worth up to $25,000 on top of that for some buyers. The state money comes from the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, and it is a second mortgage, not a gift: the biggest program charges 0% interest and no monthly payment, but the full balance comes due when you sell, refinance, or move out. One statewide program, the HFA PLUS second, actually forgives itself — 20% a year over five years. Which program fits you depends on your job, your income, and your credit score, and the biggest one runs out of money in rounds, so timing matters. Here is every live program, the real terms, and the math on a $300,000 Jacksonville home.

How Down Payment Assistance Actually Works

Most buyers hear "down payment assistance" and picture a grant — free money that shows up at closing and never comes back. Almost none of Florida's programs work that way. The mechanism matters more than the headline number, because the structure decides what the money costs you later.

Every Florida Housing program pairs with a 30-year fixed first mortgage through a participating lender. The assistance itself is a second mortgage recorded against the same house. There are three structures, and they behave very differently:

• Deferred, 0% interest, not forgiven. No monthly payment, no interest accrues, and the balance never grows — but the full amount comes due when you sell, refinance, pay off the first mortgage, transfer the deed, or stop living in the home as your primary residence. This is Hometown Heroes and FL Assist.
• Amortizing, low interest, not forgiven. A small monthly payment that counts against your debt-to-income ratio, with the balance due on the same events. This is the FL HLP second mortgage.
• Forgivable. The balance shrinks on a schedule and disappears entirely if you stay in the home long enough. This is the HFA PLUS second — Florida's only genuinely forgivable statewide product.

Three rules apply across all of them: a minimum 640 credit score (660 if the file is manually underwritten), an approved homebuyer education course before closing, and — the one that surprises people — you can only use a Florida Housing assistance program once in your lifetime. A previous FL Assist, FL HLP, PLUS, or Hometown Heroes award makes you ineligible for any Florida Housing down payment program on a future purchase, and you cannot combine two programs on one purchase. Use the right one the first time, because there is no second bite.

Hometown Heroes: Up to $35,000 — the Biggest Check in Florida

The Florida Hometown Heroes Housing Program is the state's flagship. Created by the Florida Legislature in 2022 (Florida Statutes §420.5096) and run by the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, it gives eligible buyers 5% of the first mortgage loan amount — a minimum of $10,000 and a maximum of $35,000 — as a 0% interest, non-amortizing, deferred 30-year second mortgage. You can use it for the down payment, for closing costs, or for both. There is no monthly payment on it, and the balance comes due in full only when you sell, refinance, transfer the deed, pay off the first mortgage, or move out.

Who qualifies? At least one occupying borrower must work full-time — 35 or more hours a week — for a Florida-based employer in an eligible occupation. The categories cover healthcare workers, school staff, first responders, public safety and court employees, childcare workers, and U.S. military members and veterans. Florida Housing publishes a list of more than 100 specific qualifying job titles, and the 2026 rules emphasize who your employer is rather than just your job title: police and fire departments, healthcare facilities providing direct patient care, and K–12 schools qualify; retail pharmacies, medical billing companies, and higher-education institutions generally do not. Offer letters do not count — you must be currently employed. Veterans are exempt from the full-time-work rule.

The income test. Your income must fall at or below 150% of the area median income for the county where you buy. In Duval County, the 2026 limit is $163,050 in borrower income under the TBA program (the version that counts only the qualifying income of the people on the loan), effective for reservations made on or after May 6, 2026. A second version of the program, the Bond program, counts total household income instead and caps at $108,700 for a one- or two-person household and $125,005 for three or more. If you are just over the Bond limit, ask your lender about the TBA path before assuming you are out. Duval County's purchase price cap under the program is $607,645.

The buyer test. You must be a first-time homebuyer — no ownership interest in a primary residence in the past three years. Veterans, active-duty military, and buyers in federally designated target areas are exempt from that rule. The first mortgage can be FHA, VA, USDA, or a Freddie Mac HFA Advantage conventional loan, and it must come through a Florida Housing participating lender at the rate Florida Housing sets for the program.

The funding catch. Hometown Heroes is funded in rounds by the Legislature, and the money runs out between appropriations. The 2025–26 allocation of $50 million was fully committed by late February 2026. The program reopened July 13, 2026 with a fresh $50 million for the 2026–27 cycle, first-come, first-served — and as of November 2026, just over $20 million remained. That is real money still on the table, but it is not permanent. If you qualify, the time to reserve is while the round is open, not after it closes.

The Other Three Florida Housing Programs

Hometown Heroes gets the headlines, but it is not the only state program — and for some buyers it is not the best one. Here is the full statewide menu:

Program	Amount	Interest	Monthly payment?	Forgiven?
Hometown Heroes	5% of first mortgage, $10,000–$35,000	0%	No	No — due on sale, refinance, transfer, or move-out
FL Assist	Up to $10,000	0%	No	No — same repayment triggers
FL HLP second mortgage	$12,500	3%	Yes — small amortizing payment	No — due on the same triggers
HFA PLUS second	3%, 4%, or 5% of first mortgage	0%	No	Yes — 20% forgiven per year over 5 years

FL Assist is the plain-vanilla option: up to $10,000 at 0% interest, deferred, not forgivable, usable with FHA, VA, USDA, or conventional first mortgages. It is the fallback when you do not work in a Hometown Heroes occupation.

The FL HLP second mortgage is $12,500 at 3% interest, amortized — so it carries a small monthly payment that counts in your debt-to-income ratio. It gives you more than FL Assist, but the payment can matter on a tight file.

The HFA PLUS second is the one to understand carefully, because it is the only one that disappears. On a conventional HFA Preferred or HFA Advantage first mortgage, you receive 3%, 4%, or 5% of the loan amount at 0% interest, and 20% of it is forgiven each year for five years as long as you stay in the home. Stay five years and it is gone — no repayment at all. On a $289,500 loan, the 5% PLUS second is $14,475, and $2,895 of it is forgiven every year. Compare that with FL Assist's flat $10,000, which you repay in full whenever you sell or refinance. If you plan to stay put, PLUS is worth more than its face value. If you might move in two years, only 40% of it is gone — and the rest comes due.

The Math on a Real $300,000 Jacksonville Home

Here is what the programs do in dollars, on a $300,000 purchase — close to Jacksonville's October 2026 median listing price of $294,750 (Realtor.com Economic Research). The rate used is Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ended November 12, 2026: 30-year fixed 7.11%. This is an illustration, not a quote — your rate is produced from your file.

Example 1 — FHA plus Hometown Heroes. A 3.5% down payment on $300,000 is $10,500, leaving a first mortgage of $289,500. Hometown Heroes pays 5% of that loan: $14,475. That covers the entire $10,500 down payment and leaves $3,975 toward closing costs. Without help, cash to close would run roughly $19,500 — the $10,500 down payment plus about $9,000 in closing costs. With Hometown Heroes, it drops to roughly $5,025. The FHA loan itself carries the 1.75% upfront mortgage insurance premium ($5,066.25, financed into the loan, for a total loan of $294,566.25), principal and interest of $1,981.57 a month at 7.11%, and annual mortgage insurance of 0.55% — about $135.01 a month. Taxes, homeowners insurance, and any HOA dues sit on top of that.

Example 2 — VA plus Hometown Heroes. A veteran buying the same $300,000 home needs $0 down, so the down payment help is not the point — the closing costs are. Hometown Heroes pays 5% of the $300,000 loan: $15,000 toward closing costs, on a loan where the 2.15% first-use VA funding fee ($6,450) is financed in, for a total loan of $306,450 and principal and interest of $2,061.51 a month at 7.11%. A veteran who is exempt from the funding fee — a service-connected disability rating, for example — keeps that $6,450 out of the loan entirely.

Example 3 — the comparison that decides it. On that same $289,500 loan, FL Assist gives you $10,000 you will repay in full someday. The 5% PLUS second gives you $14,475, and if you stay five years you repay nothing. The difference between "deferred" and "forgiven" is $14,475 over five years — real money, and the reason the program choice matters as much as the program itself.

Jacksonville Has Its Own Money, Too

The state programs are only half the story in Duval County. The City of Jacksonville runs its own down payment program, and it stacks with a Florida Housing first mortgage in the sense that it is a separate, local source of help — but check with your lender on whether a specific combination is allowed on your file, because Florida Housing's one-program rule governs its own programs.

Headstart to Homeownership (H2H), run by the City of Jacksonville's Housing Services division, offers up to $25,000 toward down payment and closing costs for first-time buyers purchasing a primary residence in Duval County. Your total household income cannot exceed 80% of the area median income for Duval County. You must contribute at least $500 of your own money, complete an 8-hour homebuyer education course through a HUD-approved counseling agency, and the home must meet Housing Quality Standards before closing. The program is structured as a 0% interest loan over 10 years. And here is the rule that costs people the money: do not sign a sales contract before you are approved. The city says so plainly — sign first, and you can lose eligibility. Talk to the lender and the city before you write the offer, not after.

There is one more local tool worth asking about: the Jacksonville Housing Finance Authority's Mortgage Credit Certificate, which gives first-time buyers in Duval County a dollar-for-dollar federal income tax credit worth 20% of the mortgage interest they pay each year. It does not cover the down payment — but on a $289,500 loan at 7.11%, the first year's interest alone is over $20,000, and 20% of that is more than $4,000 back at tax time, every year you hold the loan. It is a tax credit, not a deduction, and it is the kind of second-order benefit that never shows up in a "how much down payment do I need" search.

What Trips Buyers Up

Down payment help has real traps, and they are all avoidable if you know them before you start:

• The money runs out. Hometown Heroes is first-come, first-served within each legislative round. The July 2026 round still had just over $20 million left as of November — but when a round closes, new reservations stop until the next appropriation. Do not build a purchase plan around a program and then wait six months to start it.
• The first-mortgage rate is Florida Housing's, not the market's. The assistance only comes attached to a Florida Housing 30-year fixed first mortgage, at the rate Florida Housing sets. That rate can sit above or below what a broker finds across 200 lenders on the same day. The right comparison is the whole deal — rate plus assistance — against a standard loan plus seller concessions. Sometimes the assistance wins by a mile. Sometimes it does not. Run both.
• The second mortgage comes due when you refinance. That 0% deferred balance does not vanish. If rates fall in two years and you refinance, the Hometown Heroes or FL Assist balance has to be repaid out of the refinance — or the new loan has to be large enough to cover it. A forgivable PLUS second that is only partly forgiven has the same problem. Price the exit, not just the entry.
• One program, one lifetime. Use FL Assist on a starter home and you can never use Hometown Heroes later, even if your next purchase is the one where $35,000 would have mattered more. If you qualify for the bigger program, take the bigger program.
• The 640 score is a floor, not a target. Florida Housing's minimum is 640 — but that is the program's floor, and the first-mortgage rate you get still depends on your score. A buyer at 640 and a buyer at 720 do not get the same rate, even with the same assistance. And the VA has no minimum score of its own at all: VA guidelines set no floor, so a veteran whose file is thin should be priced across lenders, not screened out by one lender's overlay.
• Jacksonville's H2H has an order of operations. Approval first, contract second. Get it backwards and the $25,000 is gone.

What To Do Next

Start in this order. First, check the two gates that decide almost everything: your credit score against the 640 floor, and your income against the Duval County limit — $163,050 in borrower income for Hometown Heroes under the TBA program, or 80% of area median income for Jacksonville's Headstart. Second, check your job against Florida Housing's eligible-occupation list — if you work in healthcare, a school, public safety, or childcare for a Florida employer, or you are military or a veteran, Hometown Heroes is probably your biggest check. Third, run the DPA matcher to see which programs your numbers actually fit, and bring the result to a broker who will price the whole deal — the Florida Housing first mortgage with the assistance, against a standard loan with seller concessions — across 200 lenders, on the same day. One lender's overlay is never the last word, and the cheapest down payment is not always the cheapest loan.

Sources

• Florida Housing Finance Corporation — Hometown Heroes Housing Program (program terms, 5% / $10,000–$35,000, 0% deferred second mortgage, 640 FICO, 150% AMI, eligible occupations; Florida Statutes §420.5096) and Homebuyer Loan Program overview (FL Assist $10,000, FL HLP $12,500 at 3%, HFA PLUS 3–5% forgiven 20% per year over 5 years, one-program-per-lifetime rule).
• Florida Housing Finance Corporation — 2026 Hometown Heroes income and purchase price limits, effective for reservations on or after May 6, 2026: Duval County TBA borrower income limit $163,050; Bond household limits $108,700 (1–2 person) / $125,005 (3+ person); Duval purchase price cap $607,645.
• Florida Housing Finance Corporation program reporting, November 2026 — Hometown Heroes 2026–27 round reopened July 13, 2026 with $50 million; just over $20 million remained as of November 2026.
• City of Jacksonville, Housing Services — Headstart to Homeownership Program: up to $25,000, household income at or below 80% of Duval County area median income, first-time buyer, primary residence in Duval County, do not sign a sales contract before approval.
• Jacksonville Housing Finance Authority — Mortgage Credit Certificate: federal income tax credit worth 20% of mortgage interest paid, for first-time buyers in Duval County.
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released November 12, 2026: 30-year fixed 7.11%, 15-year fixed 6.45% (week ended November 12, 2026). Conventional conforming benchmark — not a rate quote.
• Realtor.com Economic Research, October 2026: Jacksonville median listing price $294,750.
• VA.gov — VA funding fee rates, effective April 7, 2023 and still current: 2.15% first use with zero down. FHA Handbook 4000.1: upfront mortgage insurance premium 1.75%, annual mortgage insurance premium 0.55%.

Our Take

The down payment is the wall most buyers stare at, and Florida built a real door through it — but the door has fine print, and the fine print is where the money is won or lost. A $35,000 deferred second mortgage that costs you nothing monthly is a genuine head start; a $10,000 deferred loan you grab first and regret later is a lifetime program spent on the small check. The buyers who win this game are the ones who check the occupation list, check the income limit, and price the whole deal — assistance plus rate — before they write an offer. The ones who lose are the ones who sign a contract first, discover the program second, or take the first lender's "you don't qualify" as the final word. With 200 lenders and the actual agency guidelines, the answer is almost never no. It is which program, in what order, and how much it is really worth to you.

Here's the question: if $10,000 to $35,000 of help was the difference between renting another year and buying now — which program would you check first, and what's stopping you from checking it today? Tell us in the comments.

Your Next Step

Check Your Rate — Free — see what rate you actually qualify for across 200+ lenders. Free, no credit check, no pressure.

Want to see which down payment programs your numbers actually fit? Run the DPA Grant Matcher — then bring the result to Douglas and let him price the whole deal, assistance plus rate, across 200 lenders.

Prefer to talk it through? Call Douglas direct: (904) 517-4049.

Douglas Wilkerson — NMLS #1680719
Mortgage Broker, Branch Manager
Direct: (904) 517-4049
[email protected] | [email protected]
1548 the Greens Way, Ste. 4, Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250

Freeman Douglas Corporation is a DBA of Edge Home Finance. This is not a promise to lend — all credit decisions are subject to approval. Douglas Wilkerson, NMLS #1680719 | Edge Home Finance, NMLS #891464. Verify licensing at nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Equal Housing Opportunity.