A physician mortgage, also called a doctor loan, lets you buy a home with 0% to 5% down and no private mortgage insurance (PMI). Most programs are built for physicians and dentists, but a handful extend to physical therapists with a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree, and far fewer to occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists. Here is who actually qualifies, where to find these loans, and when the deal beats renting.

I went through the program pages of dozens of banks and credit unions for this, because the "best DPT mortgage" lists floating around mostly repeat each other and half the lenders they name don't actually include therapists once you read the fine print. What follows is what the lenders' own pages say, verified in June 2026.

In this guide

What is a physician mortgage?

A physician mortgage is a loan banks created because new doctors are a strange credit profile: huge student debt, little savings, but high and stable future income. A conventional lender sees the debt and the thin down payment and either declines you or charges private mortgage insurance, a monthly fee you pay when you put down less than 20%.

The doctor loan throws that out. The common features:

  • Low or no down payment. Often 0% to 5%, sometimes up to 100% financing.
  • No PMI, even with little down. On a $400,000 loan, PMI can run $150 to $300 a month.
  • Student loans treated gently. Many lenders exclude deferred federal loans from your debt-to-income ratio (DTI). That alone can be the difference between approval and denial for someone carrying $150,000 in loans.
  • Close before you start. Many will close on a signed employment contract up to 90 days before your first paycheck.

For a rehab clinician carrying six figures of student debt, the no-PMI and the DTI treatment are big selling points. Unfortunately, these loans are increasingly difficult to find for rehab clinicians.

The catch: most doctor loans exclude therapists

The large national physician-loan banks almost all restrict eligibility to physicians and dentists. I confirmed this on each lender's own page: TD Bank, KeyBank, Citizens, U.S. Bank, Cadence, CrossCountry, Regions, and RBFCU all limit their doctor loan to some set of MD, DO, DDS, DMD, DPM, OD, and DVM. None include physical, occupational, or speech therapists.

Even Alliant Credit Union, which markets a near-national medical-professional loan, lists only doctors, dentists, vets, and teaching professors on its program page. Fairway, licensed in all 50 states, stops at chiropractors and pharmacists and leaves PTs off.

A smaller set of lenders has widened the door to include the DPT, and a few credit unions reach occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists. Those are the ones worth your time, and they are below. The take home message from this list: physical therapists have real options if they know where to look. Occupational therapists and SLPs have very few, mostly in Michigan.

The 0%-down trap: it removes the down payment, not the cost

Before we jump to the lender list, let's run the numbers. Putting nothing down gets you in the door, but it doesn't make owning cheap. Run a $400,000 home at today's rates (the 30-year fixed averaged 6.5% in early June 2026, per Freddie Mac). The second row uses 7%, roughly what the "no-PMI" credit unions charge because many of them recover the missing insurance by marking up your rate.

Path (on a $400,000 home) Monthly housing cost Cash to close Builds equity?
Rent a comparable home ~$2,000–$2,500 ~1 month + deposit No
Buy, 0% down @ 6.5%, no PMI ~$3,350 Closing costs only Slowly
Buy, 0% down @ 7.0% (no-PMI rate markup) ~$3,490 Closing costs only Slowly

Owning cost = principal and interest, plus 1.1% property tax, homeowners insurance (~$1,500/yr), and 1% annual maintenance. Property tax is highly location-dependent, ranging from under 0.5% (Hawaii, Alabama) to over 2% (NJ, IL, downstate NY suburbs). Rent estimated at a price-to-rent ratio of 13–17x, typical for most US metros. Excludes closing costs and transaction friction. Figures in today's dollars.

These numbers are illustrative. To run your own price, rate, down payment, and term, Freddie Mac's fixed-rate mortgage calculator is free and has no lead-capture forms. Property tax and insurance vary by location, so add your county's actual rates on top of the principal-and-interest figure it gives you.

At 0% down, owning runs roughly $900 to $1,400 a month more than renting the same house before you count closing costs. The 0%-down loan removed the savings barrier. It did not remove the monthly-cost gap. A house is also the single largest option-reducing purchase most people make: it converts a flexible, liquid housing situation into an illiquid asset bolted to one city and one mortgage payment.

None of that means don't buy a home. It means the no-down-payment headline does not necessarily mean this is a good deal. Before considering any of these loans, larger life questions need to be answered. For the full rent-versus-buy decision (price-to-rent, the rules of thumb, how long you need to stay), see Should You Buy a House?.

Lenders that include physical therapists

These are the lenders whose own pages confirm DPT (or PT) eligibility. NEO Home Loans is the one that lends almost everywhere; the rest are regional but offer true 0% down with no PMI.

Lender Down payment / PMI Where Notes
NEO Home Loans ~3% down, reduced/no MI Every state except New York The default when there's no local 0%-down option. Accepts 1099 income with under 2 years' history.
First Citizens Community Bank 0% down, no PMI PA + southern-tier NY DPT listed. Requires an FCCB checking account with autopay.
Foothills Bank (Glacier Bancorp family) 0% down, no PMI (to ~$806K) AZ, CO, MT, ID, UT, WA, WY, NV, TX PT and RPT listed. Same program runs across Glacier's bank divisions. Deferred student loans excluded from DTI; 6 months reserves.
Sun East Federal Credit Union 0% down at 700+ FICO, no PMI Southeast PA / DE Physical Therapists named explicitly. Up to $766,550; DTI to 50%.
Premier Bank (now WesBanco) 0% down to $750K, no PMI OH, IN, MI, PA, WV PT listed. Deferred student loans excluded. Confirm terms under the WesBanco name.
First Merchants Bank 3% down, no PMI MI, OH, IN PT eligible case-by-case. Up to $350K; 680 minimum credit score.

Verified June 2026 from each lender's program page. Programs change often; confirm directly before applying. Green rows offer true 0% down with no PMI.

Occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists

OT and SLP eligibility is genuinely scarce, and what exists clusters in Michigan. If you are an occupational therapist or SLP, set expectations accordingly: outside a couple of programs you will usually be steered to a conventional low-down-payment loan rather than a true physician loan.

Lender Who qualifies Terms Where
Alliance Catholic Credit Union (via MFM) Licensed OT (master's or higher) and SLP Professional mortgage; confirm down/PMI terms Michigan
First Merchants Bank OT (case-by-case) 3% down, no PMI, up to $350K MI, OH, IN

If neither fits, ask any "healthcare professional" or "professional" mortgage program whether they make case-by-case exceptions, then compare against a conventional 3%-down loan. Verified June 2026.

Where to look, by region

The backbone is NEO Home Loans. It runs a DPT program in every state except New York, at roughly 3% down with reduced or no mortgage insurance. If you are a PT and there's no local 0%-down option, this is the starting point.

The upgrades are regional, and they beat NEO where they exist. In Pennsylvania and Delaware, First Citizens Community Bank and Sun East offer true 0% down with no PMI. Across the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Nevada, and Texas), the Glacier Bancorp family of banks runs one PT-friendly program under names like Foothills Bank and Collegiate Peaks Bank. Through the eastern Midwest (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan), Premier Bank/WesBanco and First Merchants cover PTs, and Michigan is also where the rare OT and SLP programs live.

New York: why PTs get left out, and what to do

New York is the hardest state in the country for this, which stings because it employs one of the largest PT workforces. Two things stack up against you: NEO, which offers loans to PTs throughout the country, is licensed everywhere except New York, and the physician-loan banks that do operate in the state restrict to doctors and dentists. I checked TD Bank, KeyBank, Citizens, First Source FCU, and the big upstate credit unions (ESL, Broadview, Visions, Corning). None list physical therapists. C&N runs a 0%-down, no-PMI program in New York and Pennsylvania that is nearly identical to FCCB's, but it left the DPT off its eligibility list.

So the New York playbook is different:

  • Southern-tier NY: First Citizens Community Bank's DPT loan reaches you (0% down, no PMI).
  • Anywhere in NY: call Empower Federal Credit Union about its DoctorsPLUS program. It lends across New York and invites "other professions" to ask, though PT eligibility isn't confirmed on the page. It is the one lead worth a phone call.
  • Otherwise, drop the physician-loan framing and use a program any PT qualifies for. The State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA) offers low-down loans plus a down-payment-assistance second mortgage that is forgiven over time, subject to first-time-buyer rules and income limits (roughly $172K–$214K in NYC and suburbs, lower upstate). A conventional 3%-down loan, or a lender-paid-MI loan that folds the insurance into the rate, also works.

The plain truth: the dedicated therapist-mortgage market has not reached New York yet. Though, it doesn't hurt to call your local credit union and see what they can offer you.

How to judge one of these loans

Once you find a lender that takes PTs, the program is not automatically a good deal. Compare on these points:

  • Rate versus PMI savings. A "no-PMI" loan that adds half a point to your rate can cost more over time than a conventional loan with cancellable PMI. Get both quotes and compare the total monthly payment.
  • Required banking relationship. Several of these (FCCB, Foothills, C&N) require you to open a checking account and use autopay. Fine, but factor it in.
  • Reserves. Some want six months of payments in the bank at closing. Again, not a huge deal if you have an emergency fund you can transfer to the new account.
  • How they treat your student loans. The lenders that exclude deferred federal loans from your DTI are doing you the biggest favor. Ask specifically how they count your loans.

When 0% down makes sense

Buying a home can buy you stability, a fixed housing cost, and the freedom to stop dealing with landlords. But a 0%-down loan with a payment well above local rent does the opposite: it raises your fixed costs, ties you to one location, and chains you to the paycheck that covers it. That is the productivity treadmill with a mortgage attached.

The math anchor is simple. A 0%-down physician loan is worth it when the all-in monthly cost is at or near what you'd pay to rent the same place, when you'll stay long enough (five years or more), or when it's the only way to avoid PMI you'd otherwise pay.

In practice, that usually means the house itself is doing some of the work, not just the loan. A few cases where it tends to pencil out:

  • A fixer-upper you'll actually fix. You buy below market and build equity with your own work instead of a cash down payment you don't have. The sweat equity closes the gap. (Most physician loans are for move-in-ready primary residences, so this means cosmetic work, not a gut renovation that needs a construction loan).
  • An affordable house in an up-and-coming area. A lower purchase price shrinks the monthly gap with rent now, and if the neighborhood appreciates, that gain can outrun the transaction costs faster than the five-year rule of thumb assumes.
  • A house close to work that kills a second car or a long commute. This is the strongest lever, because it isn't a housing decision, it's a fixed-cost one. Dropping a $600-a-month car payment, plus insurance and gas, can swing the rent-versus-own comparison by more than the housing gap itself, and a shorter commute hands you back time, which is the whole point.

What these share: each one lowers your fixed costs or builds equity, which widens the gap between what you earn and what you spend. That gap is the engine of this entire phase, and it's what buys your options later. A house that does none of this, bought at a payment well above rent, narrows that gap instead.

What I did

When we bought our house, we used a physician loan. We found a house in a rough neighborhood in our city that was close to bike infrastructure and had several cosmetic issues. The house was vacant for a year, which allowed us to negotiate the price down quite a bit. We paid 0% down and had no PMI.

Over the next two years I poured all of my spare time into the house. The interior needed a lot of cosmetic work, the floors were sagging and needed to be reinforced, leaking plumbing, and a chimney that was falling apart. The crawlspace would fill with water when it would rain, the roof needed to be replaced, and the yard was a complete mess.

I fixed all of these things with spare weekends and evenings. I spent thousands of dollars at Home Depot. If I had been renting, I would've forgone the cost and time of repairing all of these things and could've picked up PRN shifts instead, accelerating my savings and coast/RE plans.

On the other hand, we love our house. It has become a source of pride for us. There is peace of mind knowing that we secured a low mortgage payment with our little fixer-upper and that no landlord can raise the rent on us. Our neighborhood has improved while we've lived here and I love riding my bike to work.

The point of this story is there are costs to both sides of this decision. Both tangible and intangible. The things that made a difference in my experience: buy a cheap fixer upper, make sure your payment is less than your rent would be, buy in an appreciating neighborhood, and understand the hidden costs.

If you're buying mainly because a lender will let you in with nothing down, that is a reason to slow down this decision. Run your situation through the calculator and read the rent-versus-buy breakdown before you commit.

Common questions

Can a physical therapist get a physician mortgage loan? Yes. Most large physician-loan banks restrict eligibility to doctors and dentists, but several lenders extend their doctor loan to physical therapists with a DPT. NEO Home Loans offers a DPT program in every state except New York, and regional lenders like First Citizens Community Bank (PA), the Glacier Bancorp banks (Mountain West), and Sun East (PA/DE) offer 0% down with no PMI.

Do occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists qualify? Rarely, and mostly in Michigan. Alliance Catholic Credit Union names licensed OTs and SLPs, and First Merchants considers OTs case-by-case. Outside Michigan, most OTs and SLPs use a conventional low-down-payment loan instead of a physician loan.

Can you really put 0% down with no PMI? Yes, with the right lender. Several programs offer up to 100% financing and no private mortgage insurance. Many "no-PMI" credit-union loans recover the cost by raising your interest rate slightly, so compare the total payment against a conventional loan with PMI.

Is a physician loan for a PT cheaper than renting? Usually not at 0% down. On a $400,000 home at current rates, owning runs roughly $900 to $1,400 a month more than renting the same place. Buying tends to win only in low-cost markets, over a stay of five or more years, or when the alternative was a loan with PMI.

What credit score do you need? Most of these programs want about 680 to 700 or higher. Sun East, for example, offers its best 0%-down terms at a 700 FICO score and above.

Can physical therapists in New York get a physician mortgage? It's the hardest state. NEO doesn't lend in New York, and the doctor-loan banks there exclude PTs. First Citizens Community Bank covers the southern tier, Empower FCU is worth a call statewide, and otherwise a SONYMA or conventional low-down loan is the realistic path.

Will the lender count my student loans against me? The best physician-loan lenders exclude federal student loans that are deferred for 12 months or more from your debt-to-income ratio, which is a major advantage for a clinician carrying $150,000 in loans. Ask each lender exactly how they treat your loans.

Austin is a physical therapist, not a financial advisor, mortgage broker, or lender. This guide is educational and is not financial, tax, or mortgage advice. Lender programs and terms change frequently; confirm details directly with the lender. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.