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Start here: your first home.
A first home is the biggest purchase most families make. This plan covers the real monthly cost, the Michigan programs built for first-time buyers, and how to keep the house once it is yours.
Official links checked November 11, 2026.
Three moves, one order
- Count the real monthly cost, not the mortgage alone.
- Take the first-time buyer programs and the free counseling.
- Keep the margin for five years, and the house keeps itself.
Move 1 · the money, without the fantasy
Learn the real monthly number before you fall in love with a kitchen.
First-time buyers lose money on the payment they did not count, not the price they did. The house costs more than the mortgage every single month, and the difference is what turns a starter home into a trap.
- Pull your credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com. If two people are buying together, pull both: a weak score on one changes the rate for both.
- Add up every debt and its minimum payment. The lender will do this math anyway, and it is better to know it first.
- Budget the whole payment: principal, interest, property taxes, homeowners insurance, and mortgage insurance if the down payment is under twenty percent.
- Add the costs nobody puts in the listing: closing costs, the inspection, the appraisal, moving, a lawn mower, blinds, and the first repair that arrives uninvited.
- Keep one percent of the purchase price a year for repairs, and a separate emergency fund of three to six months of the full payment.
- Run the test that decides it: could you pay this house for three months on one income, with no overtime and no side work? If not, the number is too high.
- Do the shopping trip with the loan officer, not the realtor. The realtor's job is to find the house; yours is to know what you can carry.
The bank will tell you the maximum it will lend. Nobody at the bank is paid to tell you the amount you can actually live on.
Move 2 · use what already exists
Take the first-time buyer programs, including the ones with your name on them.
Michigan puts real money behind first-time buyers, and most of it goes unclaimed because nobody asks. Homebuyer education is free or nearly free, and several loan programs require it, so it is the cheapest hour in the whole process.
- Take a HUD-approved homebuyer education course before you shop. Many programs and lenders require the certificate, and it teaches the escrow and inspection traps directly.
- Ask MSHDA about the MI Home Loan and the down payment assistance that goes with it. State assistance is usually a second loan with its own terms, so read them.
- Compare an FHA loan at 3.5 percent down against a conventional loan with a smaller down payment. The lower down payment is often the more expensive loan over thirty years.
- Get pre-approved, not pre-qualified, and then shop three lenders on the same day with the same numbers. Rates move, and quotes expire in days.
- Ask what the closing costs actually are, in writing, on the loan estimate. Compare that page across all three, not the headline rate.
- Ignore any offer of no closing costs until someone explains what it does to the rate.
- Ask a free HUD-approved counselor to read the final paperwork before signing. That service costs nothing and it is not a sales pitch.
The certificate from a free class can unlock thousands in assistance. Skip it and you pay for the same house with your own money.
Move 3 · the first five years
Keep the house by keeping the margin.
Most first homes are lost to a car payment, a refinance, or a co-signature, not to the original purchase price. Margin is the whole strategy, and it is decided in ordinary months.
- Build the emergency fund to three to six months of the full payment before you upgrade a single thing in the house.
- Do not borrow against the house for a vacation, a truck, or someone else's emergency. The equity is not income.
- Do not co-sign a loan for a friend or a relative, no matter how good the story is. Not with a new mortgage.
- Refinance only when the total cost drops, not when the monthly payment does. Stretching the term back to thirty years is how people stay in debt until sixty.
- Buy term life insurance when the mortgage starts, enough to pay the house off, and name a beneficiary.
- Review the whole thing at year five, with the same counselor and the same sheet of paper. Second homes are bought in that meeting, not on a Saturday afternoon.
A first home survives on the money you did not spend. The margin is yours, not the bank's.
What this page is not
It is not legal, financial, or tax advice, and it is not a loan product. It does not claim a statistic it cannot show. Program terms, rates, and Michigan property rules belong to the offices and attorneys on the other end of these links, and they change.
Nothing here asks for a Social Security number, an income, an address, or a marital status, and nothing on this page is saved. A link that is wrong, or an office that does not do what this page says? Send it in and it gets checked against the official record.
