You may need far less down than you think

The USDA Single Family Housing Guaranteed Loan Program lets you buy a primary residence with nothing down, as long as the property sits in a USDA-eligible area and your household income falls under the program's cap (commonly around 115% of the area median; verify for your county). It's not just farms and cornfields — plenty of small towns, suburban edges, and unincorporated parts of Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, and Napa counties are USDA-eligible. Give me an address and I'll check the map.

USDA has its own mortgage insurance, but it's notably lighter than FHA: an upfront guarantee fee around 1% (financed into the loan) and an annual fee around 0.35% paid monthly. Credit guidelines are lender-overlaid but typically start around 620–640. The trade-off is the eligibility geometry — income limits, property location, and owner-occupied use only.

Conventional 97 is the standard 3%-down conventional loan from Fannie Mae (and Freddie Mac's equivalent, HomeOne). It's open to a broad range of buyers — including first-time buyers (defined as anyone who hasn't owned a primary residence in the last three years) — without the income caps that come with HomeReady or Home Possible.

The headline reason to choose Conventional 97 over FHA: private mortgage insurance (PMI) is not permanent. You can request PMI removal once you reach about 20% equity, and by federal law it cancels automatically at 78% LTV based on the original purchase price. With a 680+ credit score, the long-run cost typically beats FHA. You'll need 620+ credit, and the loan has to fit within the conforming loan limit (currently around $832,750 for one unit in 2026 base counties; higher in high-cost California counties — verify for your area).

A piggyback 80/10/10 structures the purchase as an 80% first mortgage, a 10% second mortgage (usually a HELOC or fixed-rate second), and 10% down. Because the first loan sits at exactly 80% loan-to-value, there's no PMI on it — which is the main reason people use this. The second loan's rate is higher, but the math often comes out ahead of paying PMI on a 90% conventional first.

The other big use case is dodging jumbo pricing. In high-cost California counties, the conforming limit currently runs around $1.2M+ (verify by county). If your purchase pushes you just past it, an 80/10/10 can keep the first loan at conforming terms — meaning better rate, lighter documentation, and faster underwriting — while the second covers the gap. Variations exist: 80/15/5 with 5% down, 75/15/10, etc. We model the blended payment against a single high-LTV first so you can see which is actually cheaper for your purchase price and how long you plan to keep the loan.

California has real, currently-funded down payment assistance you can pair with a low-down first mortgage. The two I see used most often are CalHFA MyHome and GSFA Platinum. CalHFA MyHome is a deferred 'silent second' — up to 3.5% of the sales price on FHA or 3% on conventional — that you don't pay back until you sell, refinance, or pay off the first. It pairs with a CalHFA first mortgage and requires homebuyer education, first-time buyer status (no primary-residence ownership in the last three years), and income under the CalHFA county limit (verify current).

GSFA Platinum works differently. It offers a grant (you don't pay it back) or a second mortgage of up to 5.5% of the loan amount, usable for down payment or closing costs, with no first-time buyer requirement and broader income limits. There are also county- and city-specific programs (Sonoma County and Santa Rosa first-time buyer funds, MCC tax credits, GSFA OpenDoors, CHDAP, ECTP for teachers, MyAccess for the disabled community) that come and go with funding. As a broker, I track which DPAs are open, which lenders will layer them with which firsts, and which combination actually costs less for your scenario. Always verify current program terms — funding rounds and rules change often.