Can you get an FHA loan with student loans in Las Vegas?

Yes, you can get an FHA loan with student loans, and in Las Vegas it happens every month. FHA publishes no maximum student loan balance and no rule that turns a borrower away for carrying education debt. What HUD does require is that your lender count a monthly payment for every student loan you have, then fit that payment inside your debt-to-income ratio along with the new mortgage.

So the balance on your statement is almost beside the point. The figure that decides your file is the monthly payment number your lender is required to use, and in 2026 that number is set by a rule most borrowers have never read.

Can you get an FHA loan if you have student loans?

Yes. FHA has no student loan balance limit and no eligibility test tied to education debt. HUD Handbook 4000.1 handles student loans as an ordinary liability with one special calculation attached, and its instruction to lenders is short: the mortgagee must include all student loans in the borrower's liabilities, regardless of the payment type or status of payments.

That sentence is doing two jobs. It confirms the debt always gets counted, and it confirms that counting it is the whole of the requirement.

This matters because the belief that student debt is disqualifying is one of the most common reasons a first-time buyer in Clark County never applies. A $90,000 balance and a $40,000 balance are treated identically by the eligibility rules. They differ only in the monthly payment each one produces, and a large balance on a well-documented repayment plan can generate a smaller monthly figure than a modest balance sitting at $0.

The rest of the FHA file behaves normally: the same FHA loan requirements in Nevada apply, the same 3.5 percent minimum down payment applies at a 580 credit score, and the same appraisal and property standards apply.

HUD's own credit tiers set the frame. Handbook 4000.1 states that a borrower whose minimum decision credit score is at or above 580 is eligible for maximum financing, while a score between 500 and 579 is limited to a maximum loan-to-value of 90 percent, and that the maximum loan-to-value on a purchase is 96.5 percent of the adjusted value. Student loans change none of that. They only move your ratios.

How does an FHA lender calculate your student loan payment in 2026?

An FHA lender uses the payment reported on your credit report or your actual documented payment whenever that amount is above zero, and 0.5 percent of the outstanding loan balance when the reported payment is zero. There is no third option and no lender discretion in the choice. HUD writes it as a two-branch instruction:

For outstanding Student Loans, regardless of the payment status, the Mortgagee must use: the payment amount reported on the credit report or the actual documented payment, when the payment amount is above zero; or 0.5 percent of the outstanding loan balance, when the monthly payment reported on the Borrower's credit report is zero.

HUD, FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1, Student Loans (TOTAL), Update 18. https://www.hud.gov/sites/default/files/Housing/documents/40001-hsgh-Update-18.pdf

The rule arrived through Mortgagee Letter 2021-13, effective for case numbers assigned on or after August 16, 2021, and it was a substantial loosening. That letter's own background section records the history: the original Handbook 4000.1 made lenders calculate a deferred student loan at 2 percent of the outstanding balance, then Mortgagee Letters 2016-08 and 2016-10 changed it to the greater of 1 percent of the balance or the credit report payment.

The current 0.5 percent figure is a quarter of where the policy started, and it now applies only in the narrow case where the credit report shows nothing at all.

What happens when your student loan payment shows $0?

FHA underwriting treats a $0 reported payment as the trigger for the 0.5 percent calculation, which is the single most expensive thing student debt can do to an application. The lender is not allowed to accept the $0 at face value, and the substitute figure is derived from the balance, so the borrowers who owe the most are hit hardest by a payment they are not making. On a $60,000 balance the file carries $300 a month of debt that never leaves the borrower's bank account.

Do deferred or forborne student loans still count against you?

FHA counts deferred and forborne student loans in full, and HUD closed this door on purpose. Handbook 4000.1 requires all student loans to be included regardless of the payment type or status of payments, and the handbook's separate rule for paused debts defines deferred obligations as liabilities excluding student loans. Student debt is carved out of the generic deferment rule and routed to its own section precisely so that a paused payment cannot be treated as no payment.

There used to be one narrow escape. Through the pandemic era the handbook carried an exception letting a lender use the pre-suspension payment where a student loan payment had been suspended under COVID-19 emergency relief. That exception appeared five times across the handbook's underwriting sections in the version revised November 26, 2025.

In the Update 18 transmittal issued August 12, 2026 it appears zero times, and HUD's own change marker in the Calculation of Monthly Obligation section reads that text was deleted. The pandemic carve-out is gone, and 2026 files are underwritten without it.

What changed for student loan borrowers on July 1, 2026?

FHA borrowers with student debt met a new repayment system on July 1, 2026, when the Department of Education replaced the old menu of income-driven plans with the Repayment Assistance Plan. For FHA purposes the most important detail is that the new plan has a payment floor. The final rule published at 91 FR 23768 on May 1, 2026 took effect July 1, 2026, and it is blunt about what changed for the lowest earners:

The Repayment Assistance Plan also includes a minimum payment amount, which requires borrowers earning less than $10,000 annually to pay $10 per month. Prior IDR plans allowed borrowers to make $0 payments if their incomes were below the level of exemption.

U.S. Department of Education, Reimagining and Improving Student Education Final Regulations, 91 FR 23768, May 1, 2026. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-05-01/pdf/2026-08556.pdf

Read that next to the FHA rule and the arithmetic is striking. HUD's fallback fires only when the payment reported on the credit report is zero, and $10 is not zero. For a borrower with a large balance and very low income, moving from a $0 plan to the Repayment Assistance Plan can replace a $300 calculated payment with a $10 reported one. That is the rare case where paying a servicer more makes a mortgage file dramatically stronger.

One caution on timing, because it is where this goes wrong in practice. The trigger in HUD's text is the figure on the credit report, not the plan you are enrolled in. Enrolling in the Repayment Assistance Plan today does not change your credit report today; the servicer has to report the new payment, and that takes a billing cycle or two to appear.

If your report still shows $0 when the lender pulls it, the 0.5 percent calculation still applies. Check what the tradeline says before you assume the switch has helped.

The rest of the overhaul is worth knowing because it sets your deadline. Repayment Assistance Plan payments run on a sliding scale that the rule describes as ranging from 1 percent for borrowers with $10,000 of annual income to 10 percent for borrowers earning $100,000 or more, and the rule notes that unlike prior plans there is no exempted income, so payments are calculated on the borrower's entire income.

Borrowers still repaying under REPAYE, PAYE, or ICR must move to the Repayment Assistance Plan, Income-Based Repayment, or a standard, graduated, or extended plan beginning July 1, 2028, and the Department's June 9, 2026 fact sheet confirms the same 2028 deadline for borrowers with loans made before July 1, 2026.

Income-Based Repayment remains available to borrowers who do not take out additional loans, and it can still produce a $0 payment, which keeps the 0.5 percent rule very much alive.

How much student debt is too much for an FHA loan in Las Vegas?

FHA sets no debt ceiling, only a ratio ceiling, and HUD publishes it as a table rather than a single number. FHA's automated underwriting can approve files above the base benchmark when the rest of the profile supports it. When a file is manually underwritten, Handbook 4000.1 caps the housing and total debt ratios at fixed levels that rise only when documented compensating factors are present.

The practical reading for a borrower with student loans is that the 43 percent line is a benchmark, not a wall, and the distance between 43 and 50 is where a well-documented file lives.

The companion guide to how FHA debt-to-income ratios work in Nevada walks through what counts as income and what counts as debt. If your score is the binding constraint rather than your ratio, the FHA credit score requirements for Las Vegas page is the better starting point, and Valley West's parent site covers what a monthly debt load does to a purchase budget in more general terms.

Can a student loan ever be excluded from your FHA debt ratio?

FHA allows a student loan to leave your ratio only when the debt is genuinely gone, and only with paper. Handbook 4000.1 permits exclusion in one circumstance: where written documentation from the student loan program, creditor, or student loan servicer indicates that the loan balance has been forgiven, canceled, discharged, or otherwise paid in full.

Every word of that is load-bearing. Forgiveness that has been applied for but not granted is not forgiveness, and a servicer portal screenshot is not written documentation from the servicer.

What does not qualify for exclusion is the longer list. A loan in deferment is not excluded. A loan in forbearance is not excluded. An income-driven plan showing $0 is not excluded, it is the trigger for the 0.5 percent calculation. A loan somebody else pays for you is not excluded either, because the handbook's exclusion is written around the balance disappearing rather than around who writes the check.

Twelve months of cancelled checks from a third party is the kind of argument that works on other debt types and does not work here.

There is one adjacent rule worth knowing. If the payment your lender uses is lower than the payment on your credit report, HUD requires the lender to obtain written documentation of the actual monthly payment, the payment status, and evidence of the outstanding balance and terms from the creditor or servicer. Getting a better number is allowed. Getting it without paper is not.

What should you bring a Las Vegas loan officer if you have student loans?

Las Vegas loan officers need the servicer's own documentation, because that is the only evidence that can improve the number in your file. A borrower who arrives with the right three documents can often settle the student loan question in the first conversation instead of in underwriting a month later.

• A current servicer statement or payoff-style letter showing the outstanding balance and the terms. This is what HUD asks for as evidence of the outstanding balance and terms.
• Written confirmation of your actual monthly payment and payment status from the servicer, on the servicer's letterhead or from its official portal document library, not a screenshot.
• Your repayment plan enrollment, including which plan you are on now and whether you have transitioned to the Repayment Assistance Plan or Income-Based Repayment. The plan name tells your loan officer whether a $0 report is likely to stay $0.
• Discharge or forgiveness documentation if any loan has actually been cancelled, since that is the only route to leaving a student loan out of the ratio entirely.
• Your own copy of your credit report, so the reported payment figures are known before an application rather than discovered during it.

If you are early enough that none of this is assembled yet, the first-time home buyer guide for Las Vegas covers the wider sequence, and the complete local FHA guide sets out how a Clark County purchase is put together from pre-approval through closing. Borrowers whose ratios are tight for reasons beyond student debt sometimes find the answer in Nevada down payment assistance, which changes the cash equation rather than the ratio.

The bottom line

FHA treats student loans as a calculation problem, not an eligibility problem. HUD requires every student loan to be counted, uses the reported or documented payment when it is above zero, and falls back to 0.5 percent of the balance only when the credit report shows nothing.

That single fallback is where most of the damage happens, and in 2026 it is also where the new Repayment Assistance Plan floor of $10 a month can quietly rescue a file that would otherwise carry hundreds of dollars in phantom debt.

Find out what your credit report says about your student loans before you assume the answer is no.

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