Buying a House With Student Loans in Deferment or Forbearance (2026)

Yes — you can buy a house while your federal student loans are in deferment or forbearance. The catch is that lenders don’t treat a $0-due loan as $0. They substitute a placeholder payment, and it can add hundreds of dollars to your debt-to-income ratio. The fix starts with one question for your loan officer: what monthly payment do I need to be at to qualify?

• A paused loan still counts. Deferment and forbearance usually report $0, and lenders replace that $0 with a placeholder payment.

• The placeholder depends on your loan program. FHA and USDA impute about 0.5% of your balance; Fannie Mae uses about 1%, Freddie Mac about 0.5%; VA follows its own rule.

• A documented payment replaces the placeholder. Getting on a repayment plan with a real monthly payment gives underwriting a smaller, provable number.

• Start with the underwriter’s number. Ask what payment you need to qualify, then choose the plan that produces it — a temporary move you can reverse after you close.

Yes — a paused student loan doesn’t disqualify you. Whether you can buy a house with student loans generally isn’t the question — you can. What changes when they’re paused is the payment number your lender counts, not your eligibility. Deferment and forbearance both stop your payments, and for a mortgage they work out the same way: with nothing due, your credit report usually shows $0, and the lender substitutes a placeholder instead of reading that as no payment.

This is a bigger issue in 2026 than it used to be. When the courts struck down the SAVE Plan, millions of borrowers were moved into administrative forbearance, and many are still parked there while the U.S. Department of Education moves them back into repayment. Every month in that forbearance is a month a placeholder controls your debt-to-income ratio — the wrong position to be in when you apply for a mortgage.

Default is the situation that actually blocks you, and it’s different from deferment or forbearance. A defaulted federal loan flags you in CAIVRS, the government’s delinquent-debt database, and most applications stop there until you resolve it through consolidation, rehabilitation, or payment in full. Deferment and forbearance are pauses in good standing — they carry no such block. If your loans are in default, start with CAIVRS and student loans, not this page.

When your credit report shows $0, lenders don’t use $0 — they substitute a placeholder payment, and its size depends on which loan program you’re using. On a $100,000 balance, the difference between programs runs several hundred dollars a month:

• FHA: about 0.5% of your balance. On $100,000, that’s roughly $500 a month counted against you, whether or not you’re paying anything. Our FHA student loan guidelines cover the rule in depth.

• Conventional — Fannie Mae about 1%, Freddie Mac about 0.5%. Same $100,000 balance, but roughly $1,000 a month under Fannie Mae versus about $500 under Freddie Mac. Which of the two backs your loan changes the number, so it’s worth asking. Our Freddie Mac student loan guidelines explain that side.

• VA: 5% of the balance divided by 12 — or excluded entirely. VA lenders can drop the loan from your ratio when it’s deferred at least 12 months past your closing date and the deferment isn’t for financial hardship. Otherwise they use the 5%-divided-by-12 figure. Our VA student loan guidelines walk through it.

• USDA: about 0.5% of your balance when the payment is $0.

These percentages are guidelines, and individual lenders can layer their own stricter overlays on top — one FHA lender may treat your file differently from the next. Confirm your program’s number with your loan officer rather than assuming.

Two rules cut across every program, and a $0 payment is where they split:

• A documented payment above $0 replaces the placeholder everywhere. If your servicer shows a real monthly payment — even a small income-driven one — lenders use that number instead of the placeholder. That one fact is the lever behind almost everything that follows.

• A documented $0 payment is where programs diverge. FHA and USDA still impute about 0.5% of your balance even when your income-driven payment is a legitimate $0. Conventional loans have generally let a documented $0 income-driven payment count as $0, and VA generally accepts a documented $0. So the same $0 payment can help you on a conventional or VA loan and do nothing for you on FHA or USDA. For how each program reads an income-driven payment, see income-driven repayment and mortgages; for the full ratio math, student loans and debt-to-income ratio.

The payment your lender counts follows your repayment status — so the move is to find the number you need first, then pick the plan that produces it. Work it in this order:

• Ask your loan officer what payment gets you approved. They can tell you the monthly student-loan payment that keeps your debt-to-income ratio inside the program’s limit. That figure is your target — everything else is working backward to hit it.

• Choose the repayment plan that lands on that target. For federal loans taken out before July 2026, the income-driven options are Income-Based Repayment (IBR) and the newer Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP); a fixed plan with a defined monthly payment works for qualifying too. A documented payment — even a modest one — beats a placeholder. Our income-driven repayment guide compares the plans.

• Watch the IBR-versus-RAP split when your payment could be $0. IBR can produce a $0 payment when your income is low enough — that $0 still counts toward IBR’s forgiveness clock, and it qualifies as $0 on conventional and VA loans, but on FHA or USDA it becomes the 0.5% placeholder. RAP never drops below $10 a month, so a RAP borrower always has a documentable payment above $0. RAP’s trade-offs: forgiveness runs 30 years, and months paid under RAP don’t credit back to IBR’s clock if you switch later. Which matters more — the qualifying payment now or your forgiveness timeline — is your call. Our guide to switching between IBR and RAP covers the mechanics.

• Treat it as a temporary move, not a permanent one. You don’t have to stay in the plan you use to qualify, especially if you’re closing soon. Many borrowers switch to the plan with the best qualifying payment, close on the house, then move back to the plan that fits their longer-term goal. Switching federal plans is generally allowed with minimal consequence over a short window — just time it around your close, since RAP months don’t carry back to IBR’s forgiveness clock.

• Recertify if your payment is stale. An income-driven payment recalculates when you update your income information. A $0 or outdated amount can recalculate to a small documented payment — and a $35 documented payment beats a $500 placeholder in underwriting.

• Get the servicer letter before underwriting. A current statement from your servicer showing the payment amount, balance, status, and terms is the document that makes the number count. Pull it before you apply, not after a lender questions the credit report.

• Refinancing usually doesn’t solve this. Refinancing federal loans into a private loan surrenders your federal protections and the plan-switching lever that lowers the counted payment in the first place — and it rarely produces a ratio advantage you couldn’t get by changing federal plans. The gain is usually smaller than it looks.