Verified against official sources — 31 Oct 2026

Buying a Home on H-1B: Mortgages, FIRPTA and the Real Risks, Explained

NEW Published 31 October 2026

Our housing coverage until now has been about renting. This guide answers the question a long community thread kept asking in different forms: can a person on H-1B actually buy a home, will any lender give them a mortgage without a green card, and what happens to the house if the job — and with it the status — ends? There is no single official page that answers all of that, which is exactly why folklore fills the gap. What follows assembles the answer from the regulators' own texts: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on credit decisions, HUD on the one federal loan programme whose rules changed under this audience in 2025, and the IRS on the two tax regimes that meet a foreign owner at the rent and at the sale.

SECTION 01May a Visa Holder Own a Home at All?

PARTIALLY VERIFIED — No federal prohibition on ownership was found in the regulator texts read; the position is a sourced absence, stated as one. There is no official page titled "foreigners may buy property", because ownership of real property is mostly state-law territory and the federal texts approach it sideways. What the federal texts do is presuppose it. The IRS maintains a page whose opening sentence is: "In general, income from real property located in the United States (U.S.) that is owned by a nonresident alien (NRA) is taxed at a 30% (or lower treaty rate) if it is not effectively connected with a U.S. trade or business." A second IRS regime, FIRPTA, exists to tax foreign persons on "dispositions of U.S. real property interests" (Section 06). The federal tax system, in other words, is built around non-citizens owning US real estate and charges them tax on the income and the gain; it does not anywhere in the material read condition that ownership on citizenship or permanent residence. Even HUD, restricting its own loan programme in 2025, recorded of FHA-insured loans that "no statute or regulations address noncitizen eligibility" — the eligibility line it drew was programme policy, not a property law. The absence is the finding, and it is printed as an absence: a reader who needs certainty for a specific purchase should have the deed question confirmed by the closing professionals in their state, because title, homestead and landlord rules are state law, and this article states no state rule.

MECHANISM — Owning a home is not an immigration event, in either direction. Nothing in the CFPB, HUD or IRS texts read connects a property purchase to status, admissibility, or the outcome of any visa or green-card application. A deed is not a status document; buying confers no right to remain, no advantage that any text read records, and no obligation beyond the ordinary ones of an owner — the mortgage payments, property tax and insurance. Readers ask both ways — whether buying might look like settling intent, and whether it might help a future case — and on the published texts both answers are the same: there is no official support for either claim. What a purchase does create is a US financial footprint that other systems then process on their own rules: the tax regimes in Sections 05 and 06, and the lender's underwriting in Section 02. (How long you may remain after a job ends is a status question with its own arithmetic, covered in our guide to the 60 days after an H-1B job loss.)

SECTION 02The Mortgage Gate: Underwriting Under Federal Consumer Law

RULE — Before most mortgages, the lender must determine that you can repay, on verified information. The ability-to-repay rule is the frame every ordinary mortgage sits inside. In the CFPB's consumer summary of its own rule: "The ability-to-repay rule prohibits most lenders from giving you a mortgage unless they have made a reasonable and good faith determination that you are able to pay back the loan. Under the rule, lenders must generally find out, consider, and document a borrower's income, assets, employment, credit history, and monthly expenses." Regulation Z states the standard itself: a creditor must make "a reasonable and good faith determination at or before consummation that the consumer will have a reasonable ability to repay the loan according to its terms". There is no stated-income route around this: the income and employment a visa holder relies on will be documented, and the documentation is where status enters — lawfully, as the next paragraphs show.

RULE — Regulation B permits a creditor to consider immigration status for repayment purposes; it forbids using it to discriminate on a prohibited basis. The general rule of Regulation B, the regulation under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, is in §1002.6(a): "Except as otherwise provided in the Act and this part, a creditor may consider any information obtained, so long as the information is not used to discriminate against an applicant on a prohibited basis." Section 1002.6(b)(7) then names this case expressly, under the heading "Immigration status": "A creditor may consider the applicant's immigration status or status as a permanent resident of the United States, and any additional information that may be necessary to ascertain the creditor's rights and remedies regarding repayment." The regulation's own official interpretation adds the reasoning: "the applicant's immigration status and ties to the community (such as employment and continued residence in the area) could have a bearing on a creditor's ability to obtain repayment", and that a creditor may "differentiate, for example, between a noncitizen who is a long-time resident with permanent resident status and a noncitizen who is temporarily in this country on a student visa". What ECOA prohibits is discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, an applicant's receipt of public assistance, or the good faith exercise of an applicant's rights under the Consumer Credit Protection Act" — national origin is on that list; immigration status, as a repayment factor, is treated by the regulation as a different thing.

RULE — The agencies' cautionary gloss on that permission was withdrawn in January 2026; the underlying rights were stated to be unchanged. In October 2023 the CFPB and the Department of Justice issued a joint statement warning that "unnecessary or overbroad reliance on immigration status in the credit decisioning process, including when that reliance is based on bias, may run afoul of ECOA's antidiscrimination provisions". On 12 January 2026 the two agencies withdrew that statement in the Federal Register. The withdrawal notice states the current position in terms: "Nothing in ECOA or Regulation B prohibits the consideration of an applicant's immigration or citizen status", and, of the impression the earlier statement may have left, "No such limitation exists, and this withdrawal is intended to correct any such misimpression." It also records what did not change: the joint statement was non-binding, and "consumers' rights under ECOA are unchanged". A borrower reading older coverage of the 2023 statement as current agency policy is reading a withdrawn document; a borrower reading the withdrawal as a licence for lenders to discriminate on national origin is misreading it the other way — the prohibited bases stand exactly where the statute puts them.

RULE — Since June 2026, the CFPB's published position is that ability-to-repay law may oblige a lender to consider status, not merely permit it. In a statement applicable on 8 June 2026, issued under the Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z, the Bureau reminded creditors that the ability-to-repay requirements "may obligate consideration of a consumer's immigration status, especially where removal from the United States may disrupt the consumer's income". The logic is the Regulation Z commentary's own: where information before the creditor "indicates that there will be a change in a consumer's repayment ability after consummation", the creditor must consider that information in the determination. For an H-1B borrower this is the practical centre of the whole section. The lender is not administering an immigration policy; it is pricing the continuity of the income the loan is underwritten on, and federal law, on the Bureau's current published reading, pushes it to look at exactly the thing borrowers most hope it will ignore — how secure, and how long, the US earnings behind the application are. Expect, therefore, documentation of status and employment authorisation as a normal part of the file, and expect the length and renewability of that authorisation to be underwriting facts. Whether a given lender lends to non-permanent residents at all remains that lender's policy choice within this frame: the texts permit the consideration; they do not compel the loan.

SECTION 03The FHA Route: the One That Closed in 2025

RULE — For FHA case numbers assigned on or after 25 May 2025, non-permanent residents are not eligible for FHA-insured financing. This is the section where the internet's stock answer is out of date, so it is worth being precise. HUD's Mortgagee Letter 2025-09, dated 26 March 2025 and titled Revisions to Residency Requirements, states its summary of changes in one sentence: "This ML removes the Non-permanent Residents sections in its entirety, eliminating eligibility for non-permanent resident Borrowers". Its effective-date provision: the changes "may be implemented immediately but must be implemented for FHA case numbers assigned on or after May 25, 2025". An H-1B holder is, in FHA's vocabulary, a non-permanent resident. The consequence is categorical rather than discretionary: there is no set of documents, deposit size or employment record that reopens the category, because the category no longer exists in the programme's policy.

RULE — The categories that remain eligible are permanent residents and citizens of three Pacific island nations, each on citizens' terms. The handbook text the letter installs (Handbook 4000.1, II.A.1.b.ii(A)(9)) begins: "The Mortgagee must determine the residency status of the Borrower based on information provided on the mortgage application and other applicable documentation. A Social Security card is not sufficient to prove immigration or work status." It then lists who is eligible. Of permanent residents: "A Borrower with lawful permanent resident status may be eligible for FHA-insured financing provided the Borrower satisfies the same requirements, terms, and conditions as those for U.S. citizens", with the file to include evidence of lawful permanent residence, which "the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within the Department of Homeland Security provides". Of the second category: a borrower with citizenship in "the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, or the Republic of Palau" may be eligible on the same citizens' terms, with evidence of that citizenship in the file. US citizens are the baseline those terms refer to. Nothing else is listed.

MECHANISM — Why this section exists at all, and what it does not touch. FHA does not lend money; it insures loans made by approved lenders, which is why its eligibility rules bind the lender's decision rather than the borrower's right to buy. The closure therefore removes one financing route — historically the route with the smallest deposits and the most forgiving credit treatment, which is why so much older advice points at it — and leaves the conventional market of Section 02 as the route for a visa holder. It does not affect a loan already insured, and it does not bear on ownership: HUD's own background discussion in the letter frames the change as programme administration, noting that "no statute or regulations address noncitizen eligibility for FHA-insured loans" and that the requirements had previously been set by HUD policy. A green-card holder reading this guide keeps the FHA option on citizens' terms; a visa holder should treat any source that still offers them an FHA loan as pre-2025 material until the lender confirms otherwise in writing.

SECTION 04The Real Risk: a Fixed Debt on Employment-Linked Status

MECHANISM — The mortgage does not know about your visa; that is precisely the problem. A mortgage is a contract with a monthly due date, indifferent to status. H-1B status, by contrast, runs through employment: lose the job and a short, defined window opens — the subject of our guide to the 60 days after an H-1B job loss — inside which the worker must find a new sponsor, change status, or leave. The house does not pause for any of that. Property tax and insurance continue; an unmaintained or uninsured property breaches the loan's own covenants; and a departure does not end the debt — it relocates the debtor. Every official text in this article is consistent with that asymmetry and none of them softens it: the lender was required, at origination, to test the loan against your documented income (Section 02); nothing in the consumer framework requires it to re-test the loan against your changed circumstances afterwards, or to accept a status change as a reason to stop the clock. The planning consequences below are advice, labelled as such, because no regulator publishes a plan for this — but they all follow from the structure rather than from opinion.

ADVICE — Size the obligation against the bad month, not the good one. Three preparations answer the structure honestly. First, hold the emergency reserve against the mortgage, not against general spending: the number that matters in a job-loss window is how many full monthly payments — principal, interest, tax and insurance — your savings cover while the 60-day clock and a job search run. Secondly, read the loan documents for what they actually say about absence and letting: occupancy clauses commonly require the home to be your principal residence for an initial period, and renting it out can require the servicer's consent or breach the terms — the documents, not general advice, decide (Section 05 covers what leaving lawfully looks like). Thirdly, keep the servicing relationship warm before you need it: servicers operate loss-mitigation processes for borrowers in difficulty, but they are loan-specific, time-sensitive and start with the borrower making contact; the worst version of a job loss is the one where the servicer hears about it from a missed payment. None of this is an argument against buying. It is the difference between buying with the risk priced in and discovering the risk's price list afterwards.

SECTION 05If You Leave: Keeping, Renting Out, or Selling from Abroad

MECHANISM — Departure does not divest you of the property, and the US tax system continues to process you as an owner. Leaving the country ends neither the title nor the mortgage; it changes your tax posture. The departure itself — the final tax year, the departure-permit question, accounts and loose ends — has its own guide: leaving the USA for good. What this section covers is the property-specific fork that departure creates: keep the home and rent it out, or sell it, before or after you go. Each branch has a federal tax mechanism attached, and both mechanisms turn on the same hinge — whether, at the time, you are a resident alien or a nonresident alien for US tax purposes. That hinge is the substantial presence arithmetic covered in our guide to tax residency and the substantial presence test; a recently departed H-1B holder may be either, in different years, and should not assume the label follows the plane ticket.

RULE — Rent it out as a nonresident alien, and the default federal treatment is a flat 30% on the gross rent, with a statutory election to be taxed on the net instead. The IRS's page for nonresident alien owners states the general rule: "In general, income from real property located in the United States (U.S.) that is owned by a nonresident alien (NRA) is taxed at a 30% (or lower treaty rate) if it is not effectively connected with a U.S. trade or business." Thirty percent of gross rent, before a single expense, is the default a departed landlord wakes up to — collected by withholding on the payments. The same page sets out the election that most absentee landlords use: "If an NRA owns or holds in interest in real property located in the U.S. and holds the property for the production of income, then the NRA can elect under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) 871(d) to treat all income from U.S. real property as effectively connected income with the conduct of a trade or business in the U.S." Under that election, "the NRA can claim deductions attributable to the real property income, and the NRA's net income from real property is taxed at graduated rates" — the mortgage interest, tax and costs come back into the calculation, at the price of filing Form 1040-NR every year the election runs and giving the payer Form W-8ECI so the gross withholding stops. This article points at the mechanism rather than working it: the election is durable, revocable only within limits, and interacts with the sale in Section 06, so it belongs in the departure tax planning, not in a paragraph.

MECHANISM — Sell, and the timing of the sale relative to your tax status decides whether FIRPTA appears at all. A sale while you are still a resident alien for tax purposes is an ordinary US sale for these purposes. A sale when you are a foreign person — in substance, a nonresident alien — runs into the withholding regime of the next section. That sequencing point is the one concrete planning fact this guide insists on: the same house, sold by the same person, is processed differently depending on the seller's tax status on the day of the disposition, and the difference is a 15% withholding on the gross price, not on the gain. Section 06 explains what that withholding is and is not.

SECTION 06FIRPTA at Sale: the 15% Withholding, Explained

RULE — When a foreign person disposes of a US real property interest, the buyer must withhold 15% of the amount realised. The IRS's FIRPTA page opens: "The disposition of a U.S. real property interest by a foreign person (the transferor) is subject to the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act of 1980 (FIRPTA) income tax withholding. FIRPTA authorized the U.S. to tax foreign persons on dispositions of U.S. real property interests." It continues: "Persons purchasing U.S. real property interests (transferees) from foreign persons, certain purchasers' agents, and settlement officers are required to withhold 15% (10% for dispositions before Feb. 17, 2016) of the amount realized on the disposition". Three features of that sentence matter more than the number. It is the buyer who withholds — "In most cases, the buyer (transferee) is the withholding agent", and a buyer who fails to withhold from a foreign seller "may be held liable for the tax", which is why closing agents police the seller's status so carefully. The base is the amount realised — in substance the gross price, including debt the buyer takes over — not the gain. And "disposition" is wide: the page lists "a sale or exchange, liquidation, redemption, gift, transfers, etc.", so FIRPTA is not confined to an ordinary sale to a stranger.

RULE — The withholding is a prepayment against the tax actually due, not the tax itself — and it can be reduced in advance where it overshoots. Fifteen percent of the price will exceed the real tax on the gain for many sellers, and the IRS's page says so in terms, in the residence-exclusion discussion: "the statutory withholding under IRC 1445 on the amount realized from the sale could exceed the maximum tax liability on the sale. Therefore, an NRA may request a withholding certificate from the Internal Revenue Service to provide to the buyer. The withholding certificate would allow the buyer (through escrow/closing agent) to withhold tax at an approved reduced rate." The application is Form 8288-B, and either side may file it. Absent a certificate, the reconciliation happens on the seller's US return for the year of sale: the disposition is reported in that year, the amount withheld is credited against the tax computed on the actual gain, and any excess is refundable through that return. One clean exception exists at the bottom of the market: where the amount realised is $300,000 or less and the buyer is acquiring the property as a residence, the IRS's guidance confirms the withholding exception can apply — the test is on the total amount realised, not on each seller's share.

PARTIALLY VERIFIED — Whether FIRPTA reaches you at all turns on a tax definition, and many H-1B sellers are outside it. The withholding is triggered by a disposition "by a foreign person". For an individual, that term operates on tax status: the IRS's FIRPTA material consistently frames the seller side as the nonresident alien. A long-stay H-1B holder will commonly be a resident alien for tax purposes under the substantial presence test — the arithmetic is in our tax residency guide — and a resident alien is not a foreign person, so a sale by one does not attract FIRPTA withholding at all; in practice the seller certifies non-foreign status to the buyer. The partial flag is honest bookkeeping: the definition itself sits in the statute and Publication 515 rather than on the FIRPTA page read for this article, so the join between that page's "foreign person" and the residency tests is printed at mechanism strength. The operational point stands regardless: establish your tax status for the year of sale before the closing, not during it, because the withholding machinery defaults to caution.

SECTION 07A Calm Decision Checklist

ADVICE — The whole guide, compressed into the order in which the questions actually arise. Each item is anchored to a sourced section above; the checklist adds no new rules. One: separate the two decisions — owning is open to you (Section 01); borrowing is an underwriting outcome you do not control (Section 02). Two: do not build a plan on an FHA loan unless you hold a green card; that door closed for case numbers from 25 May 2025 (Section 03). Three: expect your status, its length and its renewal pattern to be underwriting facts, because Regulation B permits the consideration and the CFPB's current statements encourage it; bring the documentation before it is requested (Section 02). Four: run the bad-month test before the good-life test — count the full monthly payments your reserves cover if the job ends, and read the occupancy and letting clauses before you sign, not after (Section 04). Five: if departure is even a medium-term possibility, price the exit now: the rental default of 30% on gross rents, the 871(d) election against it, and the 15% FIRPTA withholding if you sell as a foreign person (Sections 05 and 06). Six: compare against the honest alternative — for many readers the right sequence is the one in our guide to renting your first home in the USA first, and a purchase once status, reserves and time horizon line up. A house is the least liquid asset most people ever own, bought here on the most conditional of work rights; that combination is manageable, but only when it is chosen with the conditions in view.

FAQFrequently Asked Questions

Official references and verification status

Verified on 31 October 2026 against: Regulation B as published by the CFPB (the §1002.6(a) general rule — any information may be considered provided it is not used to discriminate on a prohibited basis; §1002.6(b)(7), headed "Immigration status", permitting consideration of immigration or permanent-resident status and of anything necessary to ascertain the creditor's rights and remedies regarding repayment; and the official interpretation that status and ties to the community could bear on the creditor's ability to obtain repayment); the CFPB and DOJ notice withdrawing the October 2023 joint statement on noncitizen borrowers (Federal Register, 12 January 2026 — ECOA's prohibited bases; "Nothing in ECOA or Regulation B prohibits the consideration of an applicant's immigration or citizen status"; "No such limitation exists"; consumers' rights under ECOA unchanged); the CFPB's Statement on Ability to Repay and Immigration Status (Federal Register, applicable 8 June 2026 — the ability-to-repay standard in Regulation Z's terms, and the position that those requirements "may obligate consideration of a consumer's immigration status, especially where removal from the United States may disrupt the consumer's income"); HUD Mortgagee Letter 2025-09 (26 March 2025 — removal of the Non-permanent Residents sections "in its entirety, eliminating eligibility for non-permanent resident Borrowers"; mandatory for case numbers assigned on or after 25 May 2025; the installed Handbook 4000.1 residency text, under which permanent residents and citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau may be eligible on the same terms as US citizens, and a Social Security card is not sufficient to prove immigration or work status); the IRS's FIRPTA withholding page (the buyer-side duty to withhold 15% of the amount realised on a foreign person's disposition; the $300,000 residence exception; the Form 8288-B withholding certificate where the statutory withholding could exceed the maximum tax liability); and the IRS's page on nonresident aliens and US real property (the 30% default on non-effectively-connected real property income, and the IRC 871(d) election to be taxed on net income at graduated rates, with Form W-8ECI and annual Form 1040-NR filing). Five limits are flagged. First, the ownership position in Section 01 and the first FAQ is PARTIALLY VERIFIED: it is a searched absence across the federal regulator texts — the IRS material presupposes noncitizen ownership and no prohibiting text was found — rather than a single granting provision, and property law itself is state law, of which this article states no rule beyond one pointer sentence. Secondly, the statement that a purchase has no immigration effect in either direction is likewise an absence across the texts read, printed as one. Thirdly, the FIRPTA "foreign person" analysis in Section 06 is PARTIALLY VERIFIED at the join: the definition operates through the tax-residency tests, whose own page is cross-linked, rather than being spelled out on the FIRPTA page itself. Fourthly, two deliberate omissions: no GSE (Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac) selling-guide material is relied on, because those guides are not primary government texts — the conventional market is described only through the federal consumer-law frame that governs it; and no FHA down-payment figure is printed, because HUD's letter does not state one and the borrowers it would describe are, for this audience, no longer eligible. Fifthly, the 2023 joint statement is quoted only as history: it was withdrawn on 12 January 2026 and must not be cited as current agency policy.

• CFPB — Regulation B, §1002.6, Rules Concerning Evaluation of Applications (the general rule; the "Immigration status" paragraph (b)(7); official interpretations)
• CFPB and DOJ — Withdrawal of Joint Statement on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Noncitizen Borrowers (Federal Register, 12 January 2026)
• CFPB — Statement on Ability to Repay and Immigration Status (Federal Register, applicable 8 June 2026)
• CFPB — Regulation Z, §1026.43 Official Interpretations (ability-to-repay: considering indicated changes in repayment ability)
• HUD — Mortgagee Letter 2025-09, Revisions to Residency Requirements (26 March 2025; the removal of non-permanent resident eligibility; the installed Handbook 4000.1 residency text)
• IRS — FIRPTA Withholding (the 15% buyer-side withholding on a foreign person's disposition; the residence exception; withholding certificates)
• IRS — Nonresident Aliens: Real Property Located in the U.S. (the 30% default on real property income; the IRC 871(d) election; Form W-8ECI; Form 1040-NR filing)

General educational information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Mortgage terms are set by lenders under federal consumer law; your own offer documents govern.

General information only. This guide is based on official sources publicly available and checked on the date shown on this page. Visa rules change, and consular and USCIS officers decide every case on its own facts — nothing here is a confirmation or a guarantee for your individual case, and this is not legal advice. Always confirm the current requirement on the official page linked in this guide before you act, and consider a qualified immigration attorney for your specific situation.