Up to $10,000 you don’t pay back, with two catches
Philly First Home is the city’s grant for first-time buyers, run through PHDC. It pays the lesser of $10,000 or 6% of the purchase price, and the money can go to your down payment, your closing costs, or both. Anything left over can reduce the principal. The program is open in August 2026, with the usual line about grants being provided while funding is available.
The two catches are the counseling rule and the 15-year rule. Neither is hard. Both have caught people who found out after the fact.
Who qualifies
You count as a first-time buyer if you’ve never owned a home or haven’t owned one in the past three years. The house has to be a single-family home or a duplex inside Philadelphia. Condos are out. The city doesn’t post a purchase price cap, so the 6% formula is the only thing tying the grant to the price.
Income is where most people check first. The limits are gross annual household income, and the table PHDC posts lines up with 2026 area median income figures for the region.
| Household size | Income limit |
|---|---|
| 1 | $85,900 |
| 2 | $98,200 |
| 3 | $110,500 |
| 4 | $122,700 |
| 5 | $132,600 |
| 6 | $142,400 |
| 7 | $152,200 |
| 8 | $162,000 |
Household means everyone who’ll live there, and gross means before taxes. A couple earning $95,000 together fits under the two-person limit. Add an adult child who’s moving in with a paycheck and you’re a three-person household at $110,500.
The counseling rule comes first, literally
You must finish one-on-one homeownership counseling with a city-funded housing counseling agency before you sign an Agreement of Sale. The order matters. Counseling, then contract. A signed contract with no counseling behind it ends the grant for that purchase, and there’s no fixing it afterward.
Do the counseling before you write an offer. In a busy week in Fishtown you may need to sign within hours of seeing a place, and the grant is gone if the counseling isn’t already done. This is the one thing nobody warns you about until it’s too late.
Counseling agencies book out, so start when you start looking, and tell the lender you’re using Philly First Home at the pre-approval stage so the timeline is built around it.
The 15-year rule
The city’s language is plain: “If you move or refinance before living in the home for 15 years, the grant must be repaid.” Fifteen years is a long time to stay in one rowhome. Plenty of people do it. Plenty of people don’t.
What this means for planning: a refinance in year six can trigger repayment. Ask the lender how the grant is secured and what a refinance would cost you before you count on refinancing later. If you know you’ll outgrow the house in five years, weigh $10,000 today against repaying it then.
How it stacks with a loan
The grant sits on top of a regular mortgage. With an FHA loan at 3.5% down or a conventional loan at 3% down for buyers under the area income limit, the grant can cover the whole down payment on a typical rowhome and leave some for closing. Philadelphia buyers also ask for seller assist, which pays closing costs from the seller’s side.
PHFA’s programs can stack too. K-FIT adds 5% of the price as a forgivable second, and Keystone Advantage adds up to $6,000 as a 0% ten-year loan; the PHFA guide has the details. Employees of the city’s big anchor institutions can add Philadelphia Home Buy Now, which matches an employer benefit up to $4,000 for a primary residence in the city. Every lender has its own rules on which layers it accepts, so ask before you count on all of them.
A worked example
You buy a $250,000 rowhome in Olney. Six percent of that is $15,000, so the grant is capped at $10,000. With FHA at 3.5% down you need $8,750 down, and your half of the 4.578% transfer tax is $5,723. The owner’s title policy at Pennsylvania’s filed rate is $1,880. The grant covers the down payment and puts $1,250 toward closing, leaving $6,353 plus lender fees and prepaids for you, or for a seller assist, to cover.
Under $166,667 the 6% formula is the limit. At $150,000 the grant is $9,000. That’s still the down payment and change on a house at that price, and there are still houses at that price in Frankford and Kingsessing.
What kills eligibility
- Signing the Agreement of Sale before counseling is done.
- Buying a condo. Single-family and duplex only.
- Household income over the table above.
- Owning a home in the past three years, anywhere.
- Moving out or refinancing before 15 years, which turns the grant into a repayment.
How to apply
Counseling first, through a city-funded agency, and the lender submits the grant paperwork alongside the mortgage. PHDC administers the program, and the official pages are at PHDC and phila.gov. Not every lender has done one of these, and the ones who have know the counseling agencies by name.
Start with one call
Tell us your household size and the neighborhood. We’ll connect you with a lender who does Philly First Home loans and knows the sequence, so your counseling gets scheduled before your first showing. Call us.