Texas homebuyer education
You know what you can pay a month. Almost nobody has ever told you what that actually buys in your county -- with the assistance you qualify for, the real tax rate on that street, and the insurance. Get the number, and then decide.
Free. Two minutes for the quiz, 45 for the class. Nothing to prepare.
“Now say that out loud and tell me how crazy that sounds.” -- Bradley Pounds, on a live class
It goes the same way almost every time. Somebody hears about three programs, decides none of them fits, and stops. No application. No conversation. No actual answer. Just a decision made alone, on partial information, and never revisited.
The uncomfortable part is that in most of those cases nobody ever ran the numbers. Not a lender, not an agent, not anybody. The decision was made against a menu, and the menu was short.
What the short list leaves out
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs runs two options with deliberately different names. My First Texas Home carries a first-time-buyer rule. My Choice Texas Home does not, and never has. Its own lender guide says so in one sentence.
Source: TDHCA Lender Guide, effective August 2026
State assistance is generally expressed as a share of the loan rather than a fixed figure, typically between 2% and 5%, which means it scales with the house instead of shrinking against it. It usually arrives as a three-year forgivable second lien or a thirty-year second lien at 0% interest.
Source: TDHCA program matrices
TDHCA partners with city housing finance corporations whose funds are meant to be used with the state assistance, not instead of it. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area that list includes Dallas, Arlington, Grand Prairie, McKinney and Rowlett.
Source: TDHCA partner page
In the three months to May 2026, 57.1% of Dallas home sales included a seller concession, against 46.1% nationally. That is a market-wide figure and it says nothing about what any individual seller will do, but the direction is real.
Source: Redfin, published June 2026
Assistance is not free money and it is not the right answer for everybody. Taking state down payment assistance usually means accepting a higher rate on the first mortgage than you would get without it, and whether that trade is worth it depends on how long somebody plans to stay. The biggest obstacle in Texas right now is not the down payment at all. It is property taxes and insurance. Anybody who tells you assistance solves that is selling something.
It went from feeling like something insurmountable to wait a minute, this is actually something we can afford now. And now I'm sitting in my first home.
As a single mom after divorce, I felt like it was never going to happen.
They were genuinely interested in helping people out, not just a bunch of salesmen on a screen trying to make a pitch.
Individual results vary. These are the experiences of the people named and are not a prediction of any other outcome.
Three ways to start
They all end in the same place: knowing which programs are worth a proper look for somebody in your situation, and which ones are not.
Answer eight questions about your situation and see which of the programs are worth a look, plus a realistic timeline. No call, no email back and forth.
Start the toolThe whole picture in one sitting. What exists, what the conditions actually are, and where most people get stuck. Live, and you can ask questions.
Save a seatYour county, your numbers, against the actual list. Free, no obligation. Brad is paid the real estate commission when a buyer closes on a house, never by the buyer.
Quick form, then we'll walk you through itNow casting
A producer came to Brad about the way this gets done, so it is being filmed. Twelve first-time-buyer households across Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin, followed start to finish, including the weeks it goes sideways. Selected households are compensated.
Who runs this
Licensed Texas Real Estate Broker, TX #498357-B · brokerage LRSP Holdings LLC, TX #9015852
Twenty-four years in Texas real estate, responsible for the sale of several thousand homes across the state. He puts the problem more bluntly than we would.
He is a broker, not a lender. He is paid the real estate commission when a buyer closes on a house. Not before, and never by the buyer, which is why the call is free.
More about Brad →Why this exists
Brad grew up in a small town in East Texas and has spent twenty-odd years selling real estate across the state, including at the end of the market where the houses cost millions. He is fairly blunt about which part of it he finds worth doing.
“It’s fun to sell a three million dollar house. It’s not rewarding. There’s no transformation there. I like helping folks who are transforming from anxious renters to confident homeowners.”
The same instinct runs outside the business. He puts kids from East Texas through college -- his own words for it are “my big give” -- and he counts them one at a time.
“I grew up a poor kid from a little town in East Texas. My big give is to help kids who are economically disadvantaged from East Texas go to college.”
Not whether you are approved. That is a different conversation with a different person, later. Just which of the 60-plus programs are worth a proper look for somebody in your situation.
