In this market, it’s important to have your ducks in a row when you set out to buy a house. You can’t dilly dally with sellers, and you sure as heck can’t play with your credit score. You’ve got to make sure you utilize all possible resources and ensure that you are more than capable of purchasing a house, when you commit yourself to a mortgage. You might make use of a number of these government down payment assistance programs that are out there. You have to look into these things. Any last bit of help could do you good, and you’re really only shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t even bother to check into these things. With down payment assistance programs, you get two basic varieties of these: government based programs, and commercial based programs. The commercial grade programs are sort of like mini loans, and the criteria are less stringent to qualify but more costly. As government loan programs represent a larger percentage of home loans every day, it’s in your best interest to check these out and understand their benefits (and drawbacks).