USDA loans
USDA Loans in Michigan
The word people get stuck on is “rural.” It is the wrong picture. Plenty of ordinary Michigan subdivisions sit inside USDA-eligible areas, including places a Metro Detroit buyer would never think to check.
Eligibility Is About the Address
USDA is backed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and it turns on two things: where the house is, and what your household earns.
The geography is the part worth checking rather than assuming. Eligible areas in Michigan reach well past what anyone would call farmland, and buyers shopping the outer edge of Metro Detroit — Lapeer County, parts of St. Clair and Livingston, the northern fringe of Oakland and Macomb — are often looking at eligible addresses without knowing it. The boundaries are drawn by USDA and they are revised, so the only answer that counts is the one for the specific address you are considering. Send me one and I will check it.
The Income Limit Is a Household Limit
USDA sets a maximum household income by area, and household is the operative word — it counts the people in the home, not only the people on the loan. That catches buyers both ways: some assume they earn too much and never ask, others are surprised by who counts.
Like the geography, the limits are set by USDA and they change. It is a two-minute question to answer against your actual numbers and a bad one to guess at.
USDA is for a home you live in — primary residence only.
Give me an address and a household size and I will tell you whether USDA is on the table before you get attached to a house.