Physician Mortgage Loans in Texas

Who Qualifies for a Physician Loan in Texas?

The eligible credentials are MD, DO, DDS, DMD, DPM, OD, and PharmD. Here is what each one covers:

• MD, allopathic physicians
• DO, osteopathic physicians
• DDS and DMD, dentists
• DPM, podiatrists
• OD, optometrists
• PharmD, pharmacists

Where you are in training matters more than most people expect. Residents and fellows qualify when there is an executed contract for the position after training, newly attending physicians in their first year or two qualify, and established physicians obviously qualify. What underwriting is really asking is whether there is documented, contracted income it can count, and a resident with a signed attending contract often has a stronger file than the resident salary alone would suggest.

Physician assistants and nurse practitioners land differently depending on the lender. Some doctor programs include them and some restrict eligibility to the degrees above, so it is worth asking before you get attached to a program.

Veterinarians are generally not eligible on the doctor programs, and I would rather tell you that here than after you have applied. There are other paths for a DVM file and they are worth a conversation, they are just not this one.

If you trained outside the United States and hold an active Texas medical or dental license, most physician lenders will work with you. The documentation runs stricter and it takes longer to assemble, but the programs are available.

One thing that is specific to doing this at the state level: your license needs to be active in Texas, and if you are relocating from another state and your Texas licensure is still in process, that timing becomes part of the loan timeline. It is a solvable problem when you know about it early and a painful one when you find out in underwriting.

What Does a Physician Loan Actually Do Differently?

Five things, and they are structural rather than promotional.

• No mortgage insurance at the higher loan-to-value tiers, which is the piece most borrowers come looking for.
• Student loans counted at the income-driven payment your documentation shows, rather than at a standard amortized payment that no longer reflects what you actually pay each month. On a six-figure balance that difference decides files, and there is more detail on how student loan payments are counted if that is the piece holding yours up.
• Closing on a signed employment contract before the first paycheck, so the move and the start date do not have to be six months apart.
• Loan amounts that reach past the conforming baseline, which matters everywhere in Texas, and a physician program often gets compared against a jumbo loan once the purchase price climbs.
• Less weight on months in the profession when you are newly licensed, which is the exact thing that trips a standard underwrite.

Here is the part I want to be straight about, because you are going to hear it from other places anyway. A physician loan is not automatically the better financial outcome, and it is not a discount program. What it does is change what you qualify for, how your student debt is read, and when you are allowed to close. Those are timing and structure advantages, and they are real, and for a lot of borrowers they are worth a great deal. But if someone tells you the program wins on price alone, ask them to show you the comparison on your actual file, because that comparison is the whole conversation and it goes differently for different people. I run it both ways before I recommend either.

What If Your Texas Offer Is 1099 Instead of W-2?

This is the question I get most from new attendings and dental associates now, and it catches good borrowers completely off guard. Almost every retail physician desk is built to underwrite a W-2 employment contract, so when your offer is a 1099 independent contractor agreement instead, you are handing them a file their program was not written for. Nothing is wrong with your income. The program simply reads it differently, and you usually find that out late, which is the part that stings.

There is a fast lane and it is worth knowing whether you are in it. If you have an executed contract with a guaranteed salary or a set rate and set hours, and it starts within 60 days of the note date, that contract can carry the file without a two-year history behind it. An offer letter with a start date further out can still work, generally out to 150 days, though the documentation requirements tighten the further away the start date sits.

The trap is compensation with no guarantee attached to it. If your agreement pays pure production or collections and promises nothing underneath it, underwriting reads you as self-employed rather than newly employed, and the self-employed lane generally wants twelve or more months of documented 1099 income before it will count anything. A brand new attending or a first-year associate almost never has that yet, and that is exactly where a physician file falls apart at a retail desk.

When neither lane works, the answer is usually a non-QM program rather than a no. There are 1099-only programs that qualify you on one to two years of 1099s, and bank statement programs that qualify you on twelve to twenty-four months of deposits instead of tax returns. Both are self-employed paths in the underwriting sense, even though nobody thinks of a hospitalist or a dental associate that way.

I want to be accurate about the landscape here, because there is a lot of thin content on this topic. Nationally, this ground is covered, and there are lenders and writers who explain 1099 physician income well, so anybody claiming nobody addresses it is not being straight with you. What is genuinely hard to find is somebody in Texas who places these files and can read your specific agreement with you. That is the part I can do, so send me the contract before you are under one and I will tell you which lane it puts you in.

Do Dentists Qualify for Physician Loans in Texas?

Yes. DDS and DMD are eligible degrees on the major doctor programs, and I am stating that plainly because most physician loan content treats dentists as an afterthought and leaves the question genuinely unanswered. Several of those programs are available through wholesale channels, which is what lets me place one for a Texas dentist rather than pointing you at whichever single bank happens to advertise a program this quarter.

The complication for dental associates is the same 1099 collision from the section above, and it lands harder here because so many associate positions are structured as independent contractor agreements from day one. If your associate agreement guarantees a daily rate or a base salary, you are likely in the contract lane. If it pays a straight percentage of collections with no floor underneath it, you are in the self-employed lane, and then the conversation becomes what documentation we can build instead.

Practice owners carry a second layer, which is the business debt sitting on your personal credit report. Those obligations can be excluded from your debt-to-income ratio, but the standard is specific about how. Fannie Mae guideline B3-6-05 requires 12 months of canceled company checks or business bank statements showing the business made those payments, with no delinquencies in that window. A practice you bought into eight months ago simply does not have that history yet, and that is a real and badly under-discussed problem for newer owners. It is solvable, but you want to know about it before you write an offer rather than after.

If you are an associate weighing a first home purchase against a practice buy-in in the same year, that is worth a call before you do either one, because the order you do them in changes what qualifies.

The Numbers That Decide a Texas Physician File

These are the thresholds that come up on almost every doctor and dentist file I work, and most of them are pass or fail rather than negotiable, so they are worth knowing before you write an offer.

Number	What it governs
60 days	How far out an executed contract with guaranteed compensation can start, measured from the note date, and still qualify you without a two-year history behind it
150 days	The outer start window for an offer letter, with the documentation requirements tightening the further out the date sits
$832,750	The 2026 conforming baseline, which applies across Texas because no Texas county carries a high-cost designation, so a purchase meaningfully above it moves into jumbo or doctor program territory whether you are buying in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, or anywhere else in the state
12 months	Canceled company checks or business bank statements required to exclude a business debt from your debt-to-income ratio under Fannie Mae guideline B3-6-05, with no delinquencies in that window
12 to 24 months	The deposit averaging period on a bank statement program, which is the path that keeps write-offs out of the income calculation entirely
75%	The share of a signed lease that counts as rental income when you keep a departing residence rather than selling it

Loan-to-value tiers work the same way, stepping down as the loan amount climbs, and the tier you land in gets confirmed against your actual file rather than quoted off a page. Ask me for the current tiers when we talk, because they move with the investor.

How Do You Choose a Physician Lender in Texas?

There are four kinds of lender you will run into, and knowing which is which saves you a lot of time.

National bank physician desks. They built the category and their programs are well defined and predictable. They also tend to underwrite one product, which means a file that fits gets treated beautifully and a file that does not gets a polite decline with no alternative offered.

Credit unions and regional banks. Often competitive and often generous with residents, and usually the narrowest on eligible degrees and on anything that is not a clean W-2 contract. Worth checking, and worth checking early, because their eligibility lists are shorter than they look.

Direct lenders and correspondent shops. They control their own underwriting, which is genuinely useful on an unusual file, and they still only have their own products to offer you. When your file fits, this can be the fastest path in the group.

Loan officers at a brokerage. This is what I do. Instead of one program I can price a physician file across multiple wholesale lenders, so if your contract is 1099, or your student loan documentation is awkward, or your practice debt needs to come out of your ratio, there is somewhere else to take it rather than a dead end.

Whichever one you go with, four questions are worth asking before you send anybody your documents. Does your program accept my specific degree. Can you qualify me on a signed contract, and what is your start-date window. How do you treat my student loans, at the documented income-driven payment or at a standard amortized payment. And if my income is 1099 with no filed history, do you have a path or is that a decline. The answers to those four sort the field faster than any rate sheet will, and any honest lender will answer all four in one phone call.

Where in Texas Do You Work?

I'm licensed in Texas and I work with physicians and dentists across the state, so Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth, El Paso, and the smaller markets in between are all normal for me. I do not have an office in those cities and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What actually happens is that the whole process runs by phone, email, and e-sign, which is how most mortgages get done now regardless of who you use, and it means the distance between us has essentially no bearing on your file.

My own practice sits in the Texas Medical Center's backyard, so if you are buying near the medical center, in Bellaire, in West University Place, or anywhere else in that metro, there is a page with the neighborhood and institution detail that this one does not carry. Start there instead: doctor and dentist loans in Houston.

Either way, the physician programs themselves are the same statewide. What changes market to market is the price point, the property tax picture, and how fast you need to move, and those are worth ten minutes on the phone before you write an offer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Brandon Huynh, NMLS #2522494. Lock It Mortgage, powered by Swift Home Loans Inc., NMLS #2075228. This content is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment to lend or a loan approval. Program availability, eligibility, and terms vary by lender and are subject to change, and all loans are subject to credit approval. Equal Housing Lender.