Ten thousand dollars, no interest, nothing due until you sell
One thing to get out of the way first: this site is not Bucks County, and it has nothing to do with the county’s housing office, with Bucks County Housing Group, with HUD or with PHFA. It is a marketing site that describes the county’s program and hands you to a licensed Pennsylvania lender. The program itself is the county’s, applied for through the county’s own administrator, and the rules below are the county’s rules and not ours.
Bucks County will put up to $10,000 toward a first-time buyer’s down payment, closing costs, or both. It carries no interest, no monthly payment and no fixed term. The county records a lien against the property and then waits.
The whole principal falls due when one of four things happens: you sell, you transfer the title, you refinance to take on additional debt, or the house stops being your principal residence. Refinancing purely to improve the terms of the first mortgage is treated differently — the county may agree to subordinate its lien again, and that request goes in writing before you sign anything.
The county prefers to be in first position on its lien but accepts second, which is what makes the money usable alongside a normal first mortgage. All of this comes from the program’s 2026 participation criteria, revised June 1, 2025.
Down payment is the obvious use for it. On the closing-cost side the criteria name the eligible lines: discount points up to three, title insurance, the appraisal, the credit report, recording fees and the application fee.
That list matters more than it looks. Your half of the 2% transfer tax is not on it, and neither are prepaid taxes and insurance, so the county’s $10,000 does not wipe out the whole settlement sheet. Budget the rest separately.
Who the county will consider
One adult on the loan needs six months of residency in Bucks County, or one year of continuous employment inside the county. Active-duty military are excused from that one. So a nurse who has commuted to Doylestown for a year from somewhere else still counts.
Beyond that: nobody on the loan can have owned a home in the past three years, or hold an interest in any other real estate. Everyone has to be at least eighteen. Each adult can use the program once, ever. The house has to sit in Bucks County and has to be your principal residence — no rentals, no investment property, no second home.
Picked up day and night, calls recorded. No credit pull, no application.
Tell us the town and the price you're aiming at, and a licensed Pennsylvania lender calls you back to walk the county's $392,000 ceiling and the 33/41 ratios against your numbers. Worth a call before you tour.
The form takes about a minute and lands in the same place as the call.
The underwriting rules that actually decide it
These are the numbers that send most applications sideways, and they are stricter than what a lender would run on its own:
- Debt-to-income of 33 front-end and 41 back-end, measured on total household income.
- Loan-to-value no higher than 100%, or 103% on a VA loan.
- A fixed-rate first mortgage with a term of fifteen years or longer. No adjustable rates, except USDA 502 Direct.
- An escrow account for taxes and insurance is required.
- At least 3% of the purchase price plus one month of PITI from your own funds. VA borrowers are exempt from the 3%. A First Front Door award or a lender grant may count toward it.
- No more than six months of PITI left in assets after closing. Employer-sponsored retirement accounts are excluded from that count; other retirement money is counted up to twice the purchase price.
- A certified home inspection and a state-certified appraisal. Radon testing is optional. Lead disclosure applies to anything built before 1978, which in this county is a great many houses.
That reserve cap surprises people. Saving hard for two years and arriving with eight months of payments in the bank can put you over the line, and the criteria carry no exception for it.
A $392,000 ceiling, in a county where medians sit above it
The purchase price cannot exceed HUD’s HOME program value limit for Bucks County, which the county applies at $392,000 for a new or an existing house alike. HUD republishes that limit on its own schedule, so ask Bucks County Housing Group for the figure in force on the day you go under contract.
Set that against July 2026 sold medians from Movoto: Croydon $359,900, the Bristol 19007 area $408,807, the Morrisville area $425,000, Warminster $500,000, Warrington $635,000. The ceiling clears one of those and clips the rest. In practice the program lands on riverside Lower Bucks, the borough streets, twins, and condos and townhomes anywhere in the county. Up-county singles are mostly out of reach of it.
Income limits are real, and the published table is stale
Household income has to be at or below 100% of the HUD median household income for the Philadelphia region, updated annually. The county’s own web page still shows a table dated June 15, 2022, which is old enough that quoting it would mislead you in either direction.
So the honest answer is that limits apply, they are checked against your documents at application, and the current figures come from Bucks County Housing Group. Ask them for this year’s table before you decide you are over.
Counseling comes first, so start it early
This is the part people skip, and it costs them weeks. Housing counseling is required, and the county contracts it out to Bucks County Housing Group. The sequence runs free group webinar, then the Framework online course, then individual counseling. The course fee is reimbursed at settlement when the county loan closes.
Start it before you are under contract. A buyer who finds a house first and calls BCHG second is usually asking a seller to wait, and sellers in this county have not been in a waiting mood.
The program is funded and run by the Bucks County Department of Housing and Community Development at Neshaminy Manor Center, 1260 Almshouse Road in Doylestown, 215-345-3845. The Redevelopment Authority of Bucks County is a different agency with different programs, and this is not one of them, which trips up plenty of people searching for it.
Funding is finite and the county does not post a running balance, so confirm by phone that money is available before you build an offer around it.