Find Your Florida Mortgage Program

Six to eight quick questions. Top three best-fit programs at the end. No popups, no email gate, no signup. The quiz won’t replace a pre-approval — but it’ll save you from clicking through 12 program pages trying to figure out which one applies.

Get Pre-Approved in 24 Hours

Call Keith: 352-615-1613

Six Questions, Top 3 Matches

Quick scenario inputs — credit, down payment, property type, income — and you see the three programs that fit your situation best. Ranked by fit, with the why behind each one.

Smart Routing Built In

If you’re a veteran, VA leads. Investment property — DSCR. Rural Florida — USDA. First-time buyer in an eligible profession — Hometown Heroes stacks on. The math reflects how we’d actually advise.

Free, No Email Gate

No popups, no signup, no captured email to spam your inbox. Run it. Save the result. Run it again with different numbers. Share with your spouse or your real estate agent.

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How This Quiz Works

The quiz takes your answers and runs them against the eligibility rules and ideal-fit profile of every Black Rock loan program. A few of the questions are gating — meaning they hard-rule programs in or out (e.g., if you’re not a veteran, VA gets dropped from the pool). Most of the questions are scoring — they bump certain programs up or down based on how well your situation lines up with what each program is built for.

At the end, you see your top three. The #1 result is the program we’d most likely lead with for a buyer with your inputs. The #2 and #3 are viable backups — programs that also fit, just not as cleanly as the top result. Each comes with a one-line “why this matches you” so you understand the reasoning, not just the verdict.

If you’re a first-time buyer in a Florida-eligible profession (healthcare, teacher, first responder, military, plus 50+ others), you’ll also see a callout above your top result for Hometown Heroes — up to $35,000 in down payment and closing cost assistance you can stack on top of your base loan. Don’t skip that callout if it appears. Most buyers who qualify don’t realize they qualify.

Why Three Recommendations Instead of One

Because mortgage qualifying isn’t a single right answer. A buyer with 660 credit, 5% down, and a W-2 job often has three legitimate paths — conventional with 5% down and removable PMI, FHA with 3.5% down and a higher seller-concession allowance, or First-Time Buyer Conventional with reduced PMI if they qualify. The “best” depends on details the quiz can’t see — the seller’s willingness to negotiate, your closing-cost cushion, your timeline, your appetite for paying MI for a few years vs. forever.

Showing the top three lets you see the spread. The right program isn’t a universal answer — it depends on your specific scenario. When we run your scenario through 200+ wholesale lenders during pre-approval, we’ll often quote two or three of these side-by-side so you can pick the cheapest path to closing for your situation. The quiz gets you in the right ballpark; pre-approval narrows it to the exact answer.

What This Quiz Can’t Tell You

Honest about the limits — same as our affordability calculator. The quiz works off six to eight buckets. A real pre-approval looks at your full file. Things the quiz can’t see:

Your full credit report. The score range is a starting point. Recent late payments, charge-offs, the mix of accounts, utilization — all factor into your real approval. Two buyers at 620 don’t always end up in the same program.
Compensating factors. Long job tenure, large reserves, low credit utilization, or a co-borrower can stretch DTI ceilings and credit-floor flexibility beyond the standard guidelines the quiz uses.
Loan size. The quiz doesn’t ask your target home price, so Jumbo rarely surfaces in results. If you’re shopping above the conforming limit ($806,500 baseline, higher in some Florida counties), look at Jumbo separately.
County-specific eligibility. USDA’s “rural” question is a yes/no. The actual map is more nuanced — most of Florida outside major metros qualifies, but specific addresses can fall in or out of the eligible zone. We verify on the live USDA map during pre-approval.
DPA stacking opportunities. Beyond Hometown Heroes, county and city DPA programs across Florida can stack on top of FHA, conventional, or USDA financing. The quiz doesn’t model these — see our DPA hub for the full picture.

Use the quiz as a starting point. Then send us your full scenario — we’ll run it across our 200+ wholesale lenders and tell you the actual answer, including programs you might not realize you qualify for. The quiz gets you close. A pre-approval gets you exact.

Loan Program Finder FAQ

One of three things usually. (1) Your inputs disqualified that program from the eligibility pool — for example, FHA needs at least 3.5% down, so if you said $0 down with no veteran status, FHA gets dropped. (2) The program is allowed but scored lower than three others. (3) Your credit, down, or property type is below the program’s standard floor. None of those means we can’t help — call Keith at 352-615-1613 and we’ll work through your specific situation.

Yes — conventional financing is fully available for investment properties. Down payment is higher (typically 15-25%), credit needs to be solid, and you’ll need to qualify on personal income. DSCR is often the better fit for full-time real estate investors because it qualifies on the property’s rental cash flow rather than your personal income docs — but conventional remains a legitimate path, especially if you have W-2 income and are buying your first or second rental.

Hometown Heroes is a Florida Housing program designed specifically for first-time buyers in eligible professions. “First-time” generally means you haven’t owned a primary residence in the past three years. The eligible-professions list is broad — healthcare workers, teachers, first responders, military, and 50+ other roles — but the first-time-buyer requirement is a hard gate. If you’ve owned a home recently, you’d look at other DPA options instead, including some county and city programs that don’t require first-time status.

Pick “Not sure / haven’t checked yet” — the quiz will assume mid-tier (620+) and give you a directional recommendation. When we pre-approve you, we pull a tri-merge mortgage credit report and use the middle of the three scores. Mortgage credit pulls often come in slightly different from what you see on Credit Karma or your bank’s free score, so don’t worry about that gap. Pre-approval gives you the real number to work with.

Almost always, yes — that’s the point. The top three are the programs you most likely qualify for, ranked by how cleanly they fit your scenario. Picking among them is the next conversation. We’ll often quote two or three side-by-side during pre-approval and let you pick the cheapest cash-to-close or the lowest long-term cost, depending on your priorities.

If you said yes to veteran/active-duty status, VA is hard-routed to the #1 spot — overrides the rest of the scoring. If VA isn’t appearing, double-check that you answered yes to that first question. If your inputs disqualified VA at the credit floor (very rare; we go to 500 FICO with no late payments in 12 months), the quiz will skip it. Call us either way — VA is almost always the cheapest path for an eligible veteran, and we’ll work through any gating issues directly.

That usually means your inputs are at the edges — credit below 580, $0 down without veteran status, an unusual property type. None of those make the deal impossible; they just mean we don’t have a standard match. Call Keith at 352-615-1613. With 200+ wholesale lenders and Non-QM programs available, we routinely find a path for scenarios that look hopeless on paper.

About the Author

Keith Meredith

Division President, Black Rock Mortgage
NMLS 303217 · 15+ years originating · $100M+ in mortgages closed

Keith Meredith is a 18 year mortgage industry expert who has originated over $100,000,000 in mortgages. Headquartered in Ocala, Florida, Keith runs Black Rock Mortgage as a division of Coast 2 Coast Mortgage, a lender licensed in 40 states. Keith specializes in manufactured home financing, self-employed mortgages, VA construction loans, and helping first-time buyers navigate FHA, USDA, and conventional programs. He creates written and video content to help borrowers understand their financing options.

Call or text directly: 352-615-1613 · Follow Keith on X, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Get a No-Hassle Florida Pre-Approval

The quiz gets you to the right neighborhood. A pre-approval gets you the actual answer — your real rate, real cash-to-close, and the exact program (or stacking combination) that fits cheapest. Send us your scenario; we’ll run it across 200+ wholesale lenders and reach out within 24 hours on weekdays. Free, no obligation.