Ask the internet whether you can buy a house on a work visa and you will get some version of the same answer: you need to be a citizen, or at least a permanent resident, and you definitely need a Social Security number. It comes back that way from search results, from AI assistants, and unfortunately from a fair number of loan officers.
It’s wrong. Not “it depends” wrong — wrong at the level of the written rule.
What the actual rule says
Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide is a public document. On non-citizen borrowers it says that Fannie purchases and securitizes mortgages made to non-U.S. citizens who are lawful permanent or non-permanent residents of the United States, under the same terms available to U.S. citizens.
Read that twice, because two things in it matter. Non-permanent residents are included — that’s the visa holder. And the terms are the same. Not a special program, not a penalty box, not a separate product with worse pricing. The same conventional loan your neighbor got.
There is also no list. People expect one — H-1B yes, L-1 yes, TN maybe, E-2 call us. The guide doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t enumerate approved visa categories at all, and it explicitly declines to specify what documentation a lender must collect, leaving the lender to determine legal presence based on the circumstances of the case.
Why you keep getting told no anyway
That last part is the whole story, and almost nobody explains it.
Because the agency leaves the documentation call to the lender, each lender writes its own policy on top. Some read the rule as written. Some publish an internal list of acceptable visa categories and decline anything not on it. Some want more time remaining on your status than others do. None of those are the rule — they’re overlays, meaning that lender’s own added requirement.
So when an H-1B engineer gets declined at one bank and closes at another on identical income and identical credit, no one made a mistake. They asked two companies with two different policies. A bank has one policy and that’s the end of the conversation. That’s the practical difference an independent broker makes here more than almost anywhere else: pricing a file across 40+ lenders means the overlay question gets asked before you’re under contract, not after.
FHA has its own rules, and they changed
An FHA loan runs on HUD’s requirements rather than Fannie’s. Non-permanent residents are eligible, with three conditions: the property has to be your principal residence, you need a valid Social Security number, and you have to be eligible to work in the United States.
The last one used to be a real problem, because HUD accepted only an Employment Authorization Document as proof — and most H-1B holders don’t have an EAD. They have an approval notice and an I-94. HUD fixed this in Mortgagee Letter 2021-12, which expanded acceptable documentation to include the Form I-94 evidencing H-1B status. The same letter confirmed that DACA recipients are eligible when work authorization is documented with a Form I-766.
That change is five years old and still hasn’t fully reached the advice you find online. If someone tells you FHA requires an EAD, they’re quoting a rule that was replaced.
No Social Security number? That’s a different question
Here’s where the distinctions actually get sharp, and where most general answers collapse everything into one wrong answer.
Fannie requires each borrower to have a valid Social Security number or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, plus verified legal presence — current status documented by something like a green card, a work visa, or an employment authorization document. So an ITIN by itself doesn’t disqualify you from an agency loan. An ITIN without documented status does.
Which is why ITIN lending mostly lives outside the agencies, on portfolio and non-agency programs where the lender sets its own rules and keeps the loan. Those exist and they’re real. They’re also priced and structured differently, and eligibility varies a great deal from one program to the next — which is exactly why the answer to “can I get an ITIN mortgage” is a phone call and not an article.
Separate lane again: the true foreign national buyer, living abroad, no U.S. credit file, income earned in another country. That’s a non-agency product with its own documentation path. Common in Austin’s higher-balance market and on investment property, where qualifying can run off the property’s own rental income rather than a U.S. paystub.
This is a bigger group than people think
The National Association of Realtors tracks this annually. Between April 2025 and March 2026, foreign buyers purchased $45.3 billion of U.S. existing homes. More than half of those transactions — about 37,600 properties, roughly $21.8 billion — came from buyers NAR classifies as resident foreign buyers: recent immigrants and non-immigrant visa holders already living here.
Texas ranked third among all states. Which will surprise exactly no one who has looked at an Austin engineering org chart lately.
What actually makes these files hard
Not your status. It’s rarely your status. In practice the friction shows up in four places, and all four are solvable if they come up early:
- Time remaining on your documentation. A status expiring soon isn’t automatically a problem — where a prior history of renewals exists, continuation can generally be assumed. But it’s a conversation, and it’s a conversation to have in week one.
- A thin U.S. credit file. Somebody who has been in the country three years may have excellent credit and not much of it. There are documented ways to build a credit profile from rent, utilities, and insurance history.
- Income and assets that live somewhere else. Foreign income, foreign employers, and funds sitting in an overseas account all have documentation paths. They also have translation and sourcing requirements that take longer than people expect.
- Self-employment on top of everything else. Founders on E-2 and O-1 status hit both issues at once. That’s its own set of doors, and there are more of them than most people know.
What to ask before you fall in love with a house
Call a loan officer and ask two questions directly. First: does your company have an overlay on my residency category, beyond the agency requirement? Second: what documentation will you accept as evidence of my status?
A good answer is specific and comes back quickly. A vague answer, or an immediate no with no reference to any actual guideline, usually means you’ve reached someone who has never done one of these and doesn’t want to find out. That’s a fine reason to call someone else. Get the answer before you write an offer, not after — the same principle that governs everything else in this business, where a problem in week one is paperwork and the identical problem in week five is a dead contract.
Don’t be mad at money. Shop your rate.
Buying in Texas on a visa, an ITIN, or from outside the country? Tell me your situation and I’ll tell you which doors are actually open — before you’re under contract. Pre-approval is free, it takes about ten minutes to start, and there are zero lender fees on my side of the file. Call or text (512) 423-4663.
Russell Stout | Texas Mortgage Consultants, PLLC | NMLS #220896 | Company NMLS #1843758 | Equal Housing Lender. This article is general information about mortgage eligibility and is not immigration or tax advice; consult a licensed immigration attorney or tax professional about your status. Program eligibility, documentation requirements, and lender overlays vary and are subject to change. This is not a loan offer, quote, or commitment to lend. All loans subject to credit approval.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you get a mortgage on a work visa in Texas?
Yes. Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide states that mortgages made to non-U.S. citizens who are lawful permanent or non-permanent residents are eligible under the same terms available to U.S. citizens. Non-permanent resident is the category that covers work visa holders. The guide does not publish a list of approved visa types. Individual lenders may add their own requirements on top of the agency rule, which is why the same borrower can be declined at one lender and approved at another.
Do you need a green card to buy a house in the United States?
No. Lawful permanent residents and non-permanent residents are both eligible for conventional financing on the same terms as U.S. citizens. A green card is one way to document lawful presence, but it is not a requirement for a mortgage. Buyers living abroad without U.S. residency can also finance property here through non-agency foreign national programs.
Can you get a mortgage with an ITIN instead of a Social Security number?
It depends on the type of loan. Fannie Mae requires each borrower to have a valid Social Security number or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, along with verified current immigration status. A borrower with an ITIN and documented lawful presence can be considered for agency financing. ITIN lending for borrowers without documented status generally happens through portfolio and non-agency programs, where each lender sets its own eligibility rules.
Can an H-1B visa holder get an FHA loan?
Yes, subject to FHA’s requirements: the home must be the borrower’s principal residence, the borrower must have a valid Social Security number, and the borrower must be eligible to work in the United States. HUD Mortgagee Letter 2021-12 expanded acceptable documentation to include a Form I-94 evidencing H-1B status, so an Employment Authorization Document is no longer the only accepted proof. The same letter confirmed DACA recipients are eligible when work authorization is documented.
What if my visa expires before the mortgage is paid off?
Mortgage eligibility is based on your status at the time of the loan, not on the length of the loan term. Lenders review the documentation of your current status, and where a prior history of status renewals exists, continuation can generally be assumed. A status expiring in the near term is worth raising with your loan officer at the start of the process rather than during underwriting.
