Before you ask what you can afford, it helps to know which doors are even open to you.
This site has explained VA lending in depth and left everybody else to guess. That gap closes here. What follows is every financing path a Front Range buyer is likely to meet, described in plain terms, with the boundary of what I can and cannot tell you drawn before any of it.
I can show you every path that exists, and a lender is the only person who can tell you which of them will take you.
You are probably here because you want some sense of what might be open to you before you speak to anybody, and that is a reasonable thing to want. So here is the map, with the edge of my role drawn first, because you deserve to know whose word binds and whose does not. A Teal Apex Homes page never asks you to take a figure on trust, and it never asks you to take a promise on trust either.
- Eligibility is decided by a lender, and it is never decided by me.
I am a real estate broker associate. I do not approve anyone for anything, I do not underwrite a file, and I have no power to promise that a program will take you. What I can do is set out the paths that exist, in enough detail that you walk into a lender conversation already knowing which questions belong to you.
- This page offers possibilities, and it never offers prescriptions.
Nothing here tells you which program you ought to use, which house you ought to buy, or which part of the Front Range would suit you. Those choices are yours, and steering you toward an area would be both wrong and unlawful. My part is making certain the options are in front of you before you choose among them.
- Every lender adds requirements of its own on top of the program.
A program publishes what it will accept, and then each lender layers further requirements over it, which the industry calls overlays. Two lenders can read one file, apply the same program, and reach different answers. That is why a declined file at one lender is a reason to ask a second rather than a verdict on you.
- The only figure that binds anyone is the one a lender puts in writing.
Rates move daily, program rules are revised, and the limits and fees described here are republished by their agencies on their own schedule. Read anything on this page as the shape of a requirement rather than as a quote, and hold your lender to the written figure.
Most Front Range purchases run through a small set of programs, and the differences between them are worth an hour of your evening.
Read them the way you would read three offers of work, side by side and slowly. Each one names who it tends to suit, what it will ask of you, the shape of what it costs, what it will not do for you, and the single question worth putting to a lender about it.
The VA home loan
Guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and originated by an ordinary lender
You served, or you are serving now, or you are the surviving spouse of a service member, and you can obtain a Certificate of Eligibility. Guard and Reserve service establishes eligibility on its own service requirement, which is the detail that catches people out, because a good many who qualify have quietly assumed for years that they do not.
What it asks of youYou have to occupy the home yourself, which the VA reads as moving in within a reasonable time after closing, and a spouse can satisfy that during a deployment or a set of orders. The appraisal is ordered against the VA Minimum Property Requirements, so the condition of the house is the loan's business and not only yours.
The shape of the costNo down payment is required where the price does not exceed the appraised value, and no mortgage insurance of any kind attaches to the loan. In exchange the VA collects a one time funding fee, set as a percentage of the loan that moves with your down payment and with whether you have used the benefit before. Several circumstances remove that fee altogether.
What it does not doIt does not finance a property you intend to rent from the start, because occupancy is certified at closing, and it does not soften the underwriting a lender does on your income, your credit and your obligations.
The question to put to a lenderAsk whether your entitlement is full or partial, because a file using partial entitlement is governed by the county conforming limit and a file using full entitlement is not.
The VA loan in full, with the funding fee tableDepartment of Veterans Affairs, home loans
Conventional financing
Written to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac standards, with no government insurance behind it
Your income and credit are the kind a lender can document without much difficulty, and you would rather carry mortgage insurance for a while than carry it for the life of the loan. It is also the ordinary path for a second home and for a purchase above what the government programs will touch.
What it asks of youA down payment, and a credit profile that clears the standard the two agencies publish. Low down payment conventional programs exist and are used far more often than people expect, so the belief that conventional always means a large down payment is worth testing with a lender before you rule yourself out of it.
The shape of the costWhere your equity sits below a set share of the value, the loan carries private mortgage insurance as a monthly addition to the payment. What matters is what happens afterwards, because that insurance is built to fall away once your equity reaches the threshold the servicer applies. That single mechanism is the largest structural difference between conventional financing and FHA.
What it does not doIt does not carry the government backstop that lets FHA and VA accept a thinner file, so a borrower whose credit is still recovering can find the pricing unkind even when the approval arrives.
The question to put to a lenderAsk what your equity share has to reach before the mortgage insurance comes off, and whether it comes off on its own or only when you write and ask for it.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Owning a Home
An FHA insured loan
Insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which sits inside HUD
Your credit is thinner or more recently repaired than a conventional file would like, or your savings are modest, and you would rather buy now with insurance attached than wait until you could buy without it. Many people who assume no lender will have them turn out to be squarely inside this program.
What it asks of youA smaller down payment than a conventional file typically wants, a home you occupy yourself, and an appraisal against HUD property standards that can be stricter about condition than a conventional appraisal would be.
The shape of the costTwo mortgage insurance charges rather than one: a premium collected at closing, which is usually financed into the loan, and an annual premium collected monthly. The trade to understand before you sign is that on most FHA loans written today the annual premium stays for the life of the loan, so it is escaped by refinancing rather than by building equity.
What it does not doIt does not release you from mortgage insurance as your equity grows the way a conventional loan does, and it does not finance a property you intend to rent from the start, because it asks you to occupy the home.
The question to put to a lenderAsk how long the annual premium remains on the loan you are being offered, and what refinancing out of it would later require of you.
Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentOn a purchase the VA funding fee runs between 1.25 percent and 3.30 percent of the loan amount, moving with your down payment and with whether you have used the benefit before, and 5 separate circumstances remove it altogether. The whole table sits on the veterans page with its exemptions, quoted from the VA.gov funding fee page as updated 2026-01-15. Read the VA loan in full
Other programs sit alongside those, and one of them is the most useful thing a Colorado first time buyer can be told.
The fifth card here is the one this site has been quiet about for too long. If you are buying your first home in Colorado and you read only one entry on this page, read the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, because the obstacle in front of most first purchases is the cash to close rather than the payment itself.
A USDA guaranteed loan
Guaranteed by the United States Department of Agriculture for eligible areas
You are looking at the edges of the Front Range rather than the middle of it. A surprising amount of ground within a reasonable commute of Colorado Springs and the Denver metro falls inside the eligible map, and people write this program off because the word rural sounds as though it must mean remote.
What it asks of youTwo tests, and each is pass or fail. The property address has to fall inside the eligible area on the map USDA publishes, and your household income has to sit under the ceiling USDA sets for that county and household size. You occupy the home as well.
The shape of the costNo down payment is required, and in place of one the program collects a guarantee fee at closing along with an annual fee collected monthly. Both are percentages that USDA publishes and revises, so the current figures come from USDA or from the lender running the program.
What it does not doIt does not follow you to a property outside the map, however close to the line that property sits, and it does not stretch to a household above the income ceiling, however comfortably that household could carry the payment.
The question to put to a lenderAsk the lender to run the exact address against the current map before you tour the house, because the boundaries are redrawn and a neighbour being eligible does not prove that you are.
USDA property and income eligibility site
CHFA and Colorado down payment assistance
The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, a state chartered lender working through local banks
You can carry a monthly payment, and the cash to reach the closing table is what actually stands between you and a house. This is the most widely used first time buyer path in Colorado, and it is also the one Coloradans are least likely to have heard of, which is the reason it sits on this page at all.
What it asks of youYou work through a participating lender rather than with CHFA directly, you complete a homebuyer education course, and you meet the income and purchase price limits CHFA publishes for your county. Most of its programs are aimed at first time buyers as the program itself defines that term, with exceptions that are written down and worth reading.
The shape of the costAssistance arrives either as a grant that is never repaid or as a second mortgage, and those two behave very differently the day you sell or refinance, so which one you are being offered is the question that matters most. Underneath the assistance sits an ordinary first mortgage, usually FHA or conventional, and that program's own costs apply as they normally would.
What it does not doIt does not lower the payment on the first mortgage, and it does not set aside a lender's underwriting. Assistance is built to get you to the closing table, not past a standard you do not yet meet.
The question to put to a lenderAsk whether the assistance in front of you is a grant or a repayable second mortgage, and exactly what event triggers repayment.
Colorado Housing and Finance Authority
A jumbo loan
Any loan above the conforming limit for its county, held or sold outside the agencies
The house you want costs more than the conforming limit where it stands, which on the Front Range arrives sooner in the Denver metro counties than it does in El Paso County. Nothing about needing one says anything about you except that the county limit sits below the price.
What it asks of youMore of everything a conventional file asks for: more reserves left over after closing, a stronger credit profile, and documentation that satisfies whichever investor will hold the loan, since there is no agency rule book standing behind it.
The shape of the costPricing is set by whoever is willing to hold the loan, so it moves with the appetite of that market rather than with an agency guideline. Two lenders can look at the same file and quote materially different terms, which makes shopping the loan worth real effort here.
What it does not doIt does not follow the agency rule book, so a term someone told you is standard may not be standard on this loan, and the size of the loan confers nothing at all except a larger balance.
The question to put to a lenderAsk where the conforming limit falls in the county you are buying in, and what the file would look like if you brought the loan just underneath it.
Federal Housing Finance Agency, conforming loan limits
Financing a home you will not live in
Conventional investor financing, and the products written around it
You are buying a rental, or a second unit, or the house you will move out of and keep. This is a different underwriting conversation from the one you had on the home you live in, and starting it early spares you the discovery that the loan you assumed you had is not the loan on offer.
What it asks of youA larger down payment than an owner occupied purchase, reserves the lender can see and count, and in most cases a stronger credit profile than the same lender would accept on your own home. Where rental income is counted toward the file, the lender will want it evidenced in a particular way rather than estimated.
The shape of the costInvestor pricing runs above owner occupied pricing for the same borrower, because the lender is pricing the plain fact that the payment on a house you do not sleep in tends to be the first one a household lets go.
What it does not doThe occupancy programs do not reach it at all. Neither a VA nor an FHA nor a USDA loan finances a property you intend to rent from the start, whatever an internet forum told you was possible.
The question to put to a lenderAsk how the lender will treat projected rent on the property, and what the file needs to look like if none of that rent is counted at all.
How an investment purchase is underwritten hereConsumer Financial Protection Bureau, Owning a HomeThe conforming limit is the line a jumbo loan sits above, and it is published county by county.
A loan is jumbo because of where it stands rather than because of what it is, so the useful figure is the limit for the county you are buying in. These are the current one unit limits for the counties this practice works in, and the same figures govern a VA borrower using partial entitlement.
| County | One unit conforming limit |
|---|---|
| El Paso County, Colorado Springs, Fort Carson, Peterson, Schriever, and the Air Force Academy | $832,750 |
| Denver County, and Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Douglas, and Jefferson | $862,500 |
| Teller and Pueblo counties, at the 2026 national baseline | $832,750 |
A limit is republished every year, and a lender works from the current one rather than from this table. The veterans page works through how the same figure decides a partial entitlement file.
The words first time buyer mean something narrower and a good deal kinder than most people assume.
This is the most common reason somebody rules themselves out of help they could have had. The phrase belongs to the program rather than to ordinary speech, and the version each program uses is written down where you are able to read it before you decide anything.
- The term is a lookback, and it is not a life sentence.
Most programs do not ask whether you have ever owned a home. They ask whether you have held an ownership interest in a principal residence inside a defined recent window, and if you have not, you meet the definition again. HUD publishes the definition most programs borrow, and CHFA publishes the one it applies in Colorado, so the window is worth reading rather than assuming.
- Several people who have owned a home before still qualify.
The definition carries exceptions written for real lives: a person who owned a home only with a former spouse, a single parent, a displaced homemaker returning to work, and someone whose previous home was never permanently affixed to a foundation. If one of those describes you, ask the question rather than ruling yourself out of it.
- Some programs set the requirement aside entirely in named areas.
Certain programs waive the first time buyer test for properties inside targeted areas that the program designates itself, census tract by census tract. Whether a particular address sits inside one is a question for the lender running that program, and not something to judge from a map you found on your own.
- First time status is not the only door into assistance.
Down payment assistance is widely assumed to be reserved for first time buyers. Several Colorado programs open wider than that, and some are aimed at particular occupations rather than at first time buyers at all. The useful question is what you qualify for now, rather than what you once qualified for.
A pre approval and a pre qualification are different documents, and a seller can tell them apart at a glance.
This site has told you what a pre approval is not. Here is what each stage actually is, in the order you meet them, so you can see where you are standing and what the next step would buy you.
A conversation, which commits nobody
You describe your situation and a lender tells you what looks possible. Nothing has been verified, nothing has been pulled, and the figure you leave with is a good faith guess. It is useful for orientation and it is worth nothing at all inside an offer.
A pre qualification
The lender takes what you have said about your income, your debts and your savings and runs it through a calculator. Usually your credit has not been pulled and no document has been read. Listing agents know the difference, which is why a pre qualification letter rarely moves anybody.
A pre approval
Here the lender has pulled your credit, read your documents, and run them through an underwriter or an automated underwriting system. The letter names a figure the lender is prepared to stand behind, subject to the property and to nothing changing on your side. This is the letter that travels with an offer.
A commitment, and then a clear to close
After the appraisal, the title work and the final underwriting, the lender commits to a specific loan on a specific house, and shortly before closing it clears the file to fund. Everything before this stage is a statement of what the lender expects to be able to do.
Nothing on this page is a promise, and the reason is worth stating plainly.
You will notice that this page carries almost no numbers. That is deliberate. Every description here was read against its published source on 2026-09-06, and between that day and the day you are reading, a rule may have been revised, a limit republished, or a program funded differently. A page that printed a rate or a credit threshold would be selling you certainty it does not have.
Every figure a Teal Apex Homes page prints carries a source and a date, and this page is held to that same standard even where the truthful answer is the shape of a requirement rather than a number. Where a figure matters to your decision, take it from the body that publishes it, and then from the lender who will put it in writing for you.
Department of Veterans Affairs
Publishes the VA home loan rules, the funding fee table and its exemptions, the occupancy standard, and the process for requesting a Certificate of Eligibility.
Read what they publishColorado Housing and Finance Authority
Publishes the Colorado down payment assistance programs, the participating lender list, the county income and purchase price limits, and the education requirement.
Read what they publishDepartment of Housing and Urban Development
Publishes the FHA program rules, the structure of both mortgage insurance premiums, and the FHA loan limits county by county.
Read what they publishUnited States Department of Agriculture
Publishes the property eligibility map and the household income ceilings that decide a USDA loan, address by address and county by county.
Read what they publishFederal Housing Finance Agency
Sets the conforming loan limits each year, which is the line a jumbo loan sits above and the figure that governs a VA borrower using partial entitlement.
Read what they publishConsumer Financial Protection Bureau
Publishes plain language guidance on reading a loan estimate, comparing offers from several lenders, and knowing which closing costs are negotiable.
Read what they publish
If you do one thing after reading this, make it a conversation with a lender rather than another evening of reading.
Reading is comfortable and it has a ceiling. A lender can convert everything on this page into a single written figure for you, and once that figure exists the rest of the work becomes real rather than hypothetical.
- Gather three things before you make the call.
The income documentation a lender will ask you for, a rough figure for what you have available to put down and to keep in reserve afterwards, and a list of the debts that leave your account every month. Every conversation described on this page starts with those three.
- Speak to more than one lender, and compare in writing.
Overlays are the reason two lenders can reach different answers on one file, and the written loan estimate is where that difference becomes visible. Comparing two of them costs you an afternoon and nothing else.
- Bring the answer back to me.
Once a lender has given you a figure in writing, we can set it against real houses with their real taxes, insurance and dues, and see what it actually reaches here. That part is what I am for.