DACA recipients usually hear about three loan programs: FHA, USDA and conventional. Two of the three are now closed, and they are closed by different rules. Here is each one traced back to its own text, so you can tell a current answer from an outdated one.
FHA once reached DACA recipients through its non-permanent resident category. HUD's March 2025 letters deleted that category outright, and every FHA case opened from May 25, 2025 onward must follow it.
The replacement list has just two non-citizen entries: green card holders, and people holding Micronesian, Marshallese or Palauan citizenship. Deferred action is neither, so a new FHA loan is not available on a DACA file, whatever the income or credit.
USDA's guaranteed home loan regulation requires applicants to be U.S. citizens, U.S. non-citizen nationals, or qualified aliens. The regulation borrows that term from the 1996 welfare reform law, 8 U.S.C. 1641, which lists who counts: permanent residents, people granted asylum, refugees, people paroled for at least a year, people whose deportation is withheld, certain Cuban and Haitian entrants, Compact citizens, and some others.
DACA is not on that list. This is not part of the 2025 change; it predates it, which is why rural buyers with DACA have long been pointed elsewhere.
Conventional loans. Fannie Mae will purchase a loan to a lawfully present non-permanent resident with no special terms attached, and it never lists which documents prove legal presence. It leaves that decision to the lender. Fannie does not mention DACA, so some lenders accept a DACA file and some do not. That gap is where most of the work is, and it is covered on what lenders ask for.
If you later become a permanent resident, both closed doors reopen: a green card lets you use FHA exactly as a citizen would, and it heads USDA's qualified alien list. The wider picture for every status is at programs by status.
Rulebook references: ML 2025-09 / TI-490; HUD 4000.1 residency section; USDA rule 3555.151(b) with its 3555.10 definition; the PRWORA list at 8 USC 1641(b); Fannie B2-2-02. General information only, not legal advice; no lending commitment.
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