A first-time buyer in Sunnyvale, California, earning the area median income faces a median home price well above $1 million. In Greenville, North Carolina, the sticker price is lower, but scraping together a 3% to 5% down payment on top of closing costs, inspections, and moving expenses can still feel like climbing a wall. Both cities now run publicly funded programs that hand qualifying buyers thousands of dollars toward that upfront bill. And as of mid-2026, they have a lot of company.
The total number of down-payment-assistance (DPA) programs tracked across the country has reached a record 2,624, up from 2,373 a year earlier, according to the Down Payment Resource Homeownership Program Index, which catalogs offerings from state housing finance agencies, counties, cities, and nonprofits. The average benefit per qualifying household is roughly $18,000, a figure Down Payment Resource derives as a simple average across all cataloged programs rather than weighting by enrollment or dollars disbursed. That surge reflects a broad, bipartisan push by local governments to keep ownership within reach even as 30-year fixed mortgage rates remain elevated and the national median existing-home price hovers above $400,000 based on NAR’s early-to-mid 2025 monthly reports, per National Association of Realtors data.
“We are seeing cities and counties that never had a down-payment program before launch one for the first time,” said Rob Chrane, founder and CEO of Down Payment Resource, in a June 2026 interview. “The 2,624 count is not just existing programs being relabeled. A meaningful share are net-new offerings created in the last 12 months.”
How the money actually works
Down-payment assistance is not a single federal benefit. It is a patchwork of state, county, and city offerings, each with its own rules, funding pool, and application window. Three municipal examples show the range…