The Bank Grant Aimed at Buyers Like You Is Gone. The One Based on Your Income Isn't.

If a loan officer once told you about a special program for buyers like you, and you have been quietly counting on it for your down payment, stop counting. At the big banks, most of those programs were shut down months ago. On Tuesday the federal government made it official.

Now the part nobody is saying out loud: the help that actually moves the needle for most first-time buyers was never coming from a bank, and it is still sitting there.

On August 25, eight federal agencies, the FDIC, NCUA, OCC, CFPB, HUD, DOJ, FHFA and Treasury, jointly rescinded a February 2022 statement that had encouraged lenders to run special purpose credit programs. Those are lending pools aimed at a defined group of borrowers, and the 2022 statement told banks the government wanted to see more of them. The agencies now say the old reading “cannot be reconciled with the statutory text” of the fair lending laws, and that lenders “should not rely upon the Interagency Statement or other related issuances going forward.”

Read the timeline, though. FHFA already ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to kill their versions in March 2025. The CFPB rewrote Regulation B in April 2026 to bar for-profit lenders from using race, color, national origin, or sex as the eligibility test. By the time this week’s notice landed, the banks had long since read the room. Bank of America ended its program in 2025. Wells Fargo ended one that had earmarked $150 million to help Black borrowers refinance into lower rates. JPMorgan Chase and U.S. Bancorp would not tell American Banker where theirs stood.

This week’s announcement is a headstone. The funeral was in April.

Now the money question. What was in those bank programs, and what’s left?

Fannie and Freddie’s programs helped about 15,000 borrowers buy homes across their entire run, per FHFA’s own report to Congress. Those 15,000 people mattered. The bank programs were smaller still. Meanwhile the boring, income-tested pipeline is fully intact: state and local housing finance agencies and nonprofits, handing out down payment and closing cost money under an area median income cap. That machinery was never a special purpose credit program under Regulation B, and this week’s notice doesn’t touch it.

Bank of America’s own grants are still live, and people confuse them with the program that died. Its Down Payment Grant runs up to 3% of the price, capped at $10,000, for first-time buyers in select markets with income limits. America’s Home Grant is a lender credit up to $7,500 for closing costs or a rate buydown. Income and geography, not race. Untouched.

Do two things this week.

If you have a pre-approval with any grant attached, email your loan officer today and ask, in writing, whether that grant is still funded and still on your file. Don’t accept a verbal yes. The agencies pulled guidance, not your loan terms, but assistance desks are being reorganized right now and a phone reassurance is worth nothing at the closing table.

Then go get the state money regardless. Search your state housing finance agency by name plus “down payment assistance,” and check the income cap, which commonly sits at 80% of area median income, and the first-time buyer test, which usually just means you haven’t owned a home in three years. Credit score minimums hover around 640. Take whichever number is bigger.

The loudest version of this story is that help for buyers is over. It isn’t. A narrow slice ended, in public, over eighteen months. If a lender tells you your assistance vanished on Tuesday, ask which program, then ask what your state offers instead. Run the gap through our mortgage calculator before you accept a smaller number, and start at the mortgages hub if you’re early.

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