St. George Mortgage Rates

St. George Mortgages: The Short Version

Most Utah mortgage markets are first-home markets. St. George is not. A large share of the loans we write in Washington County are for people who already own a home somewhere else, or who own one free and clear and are deciding what to do with the equity, or who are past the age where a W-2 explains their income. That single fact, the home is often not the borrower’s only home, and the borrower is often not working, changes almost every part of the file.

It changes the down payment, because occupancy classification drives pricing. It changes how income is documented, because retirement distributions and Social Security are underwritten differently from a pay stub. It changes what programs exist, because a reverse mortgage is on the table here in a way it is not for a 34-year-old in Herriman. And it changes the property review, because resort-adjacent projects with rental pools and heavy investor ownership fail agency warrantability tests at a rate you do not see on the Wasatch Front.

Reverse Mortgages (HECM) for Owners 62 and Older

Washington County has one of Utah’s oldest median populations, and many homeowners here hold substantial equity against modest fixed income. That is the situation the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage was built for. It is also the product that attracts the most bad information, so we will be plain about how it works and about what can go wrong.

What a HECM actually is

A HECM is a mortgage insured by FHA that converts part of your home equity into cash. The distinguishing feature is that no monthly mortgage payment is required. Interest and mortgage insurance accrue onto the balance rather than being billed to you. Because nothing is being paid down, the balance grows over time and remaining equity shrinks. That is the trade, and anyone describing a reverse mortgage without saying so is not being straight with you.

You stay on title. This is the most common misunderstanding we hear on the phone. The bank does not take your house. You remain the owner of record, with the lender holding a lien exactly as with any other mortgage, and you can sell at any time.

The loan comes due when the last borrower leaves the home permanently: by selling, by moving out for good, or by passing away. A move to assisted living that becomes permanent, generally after twelve consecutive months out of the home, is a maturity event. The loan is then repaid, usually from sale proceeds, and anything left over goes to the borrower or the estate. How much you can borrow depends on the age of the youngest borrower, current rates, and the lesser of appraised value or the FHA lending limit.

The obligations that do not go away, read this part twice

“No monthly mortgage payment” does not mean no monthly cost of ownership. As a HECM borrower you remain fully responsible for:

Failing any of these can put the loan into default and lead to foreclosure. That is not a scare tactic, unpaid property taxes and lapsed hazard insurance are the leading causes of HECM foreclosure nationally. If your budget is tight enough that a tax bill is genuinely uncertain, a reverse mortgage may make things worse rather than better, and we will tell you so. Lenders sometimes require a set-aside from the proceeds to cover future taxes and insurance. That reduces your available cash but protects the arrangement, and it is usually a good outcome rather than a penalty.

HUD counseling and non-recourse protection

Before a HECM application can proceed, every borrower must complete a session with an independent counselor approved by HUD. The counselor works neither for us nor for the lender; their job is to walk you through costs, alternatives and consequences and confirm you understand what you are signing. You receive a certificate and the loan cannot close without it. We encourage adult children to sit in: counseling can be done by phone, and skeptical family members usually raise their concerns at the right time, before the loan exists.

A HECM is also a non-recourse loan. Neither you nor your heirs will ever owe more than the home is worth when the loan is repaid. If the balance has grown past the value of the house, FHA mortgage insurance covers the shortfall; the lender cannot pursue your other assets or your children. When the loan matures, heirs can generally sell and keep any equity above the balance, pay the loan off and keep the house, or sign it over by deed in lieu and walk away owing nothing. Those options carry deadlines, so heirs should contact the servicer immediately.

How the money comes to you

Tenure, term and line-of-credit options are available on adjustable-rate HECMs; fixed-rate HECMs are generally single-draw.

The line of credit is the option most often overlooked. An unused HECM credit line grows at the same rate the balance would, so the longer you leave it alone, the more capacity you have. For a retiree who wants a buffer that does not depend on a bank renewing a HELOC in a bad year, that is a genuinely different tool. See our reverse mortgage page, then call and we will run your actual numbers.

HECM for Purchase: Buying a St. George Home With No Monthly Payment

HECM for Purchase lets a buyer aged 62 or older use a reverse mortgage to buy a home rather than tap equity in one they already own. You bring a large down payment, most often from the sale of a previous residence, the HECM covers the rest, and there is no required monthly mortgage payment from day one. It is under-marketed, and it fits Washington County better than almost anywhere else in Utah.

Consider the case we see constantly: a couple in their late sixties sells in California or Nevada, nets a substantial sum, and wants to relocate here. The instinct is to pay cash. HECM for Purchase is the third path between paying cash and taking a traditional mortgage: commit part of the proceeds instead of all of them, buy the home, and keep the remainder invested or liquid with no monthly principal and interest obligation.

Mechanically it closes like any purchase: one transaction, one settlement, one set of closing costs. The required down payment is calculated the way HECM proceeds always are: age of the youngest borrower, expected interest rate, and price or appraised value. Older buyers put down less. The down payment must come from qualifying sources such as sale proceeds, savings or retirement accounts, and cannot be borrowed. The home must become your principal residence, generally within 60 days, and it has to meet FHA condition standards, which occasionally matters on older homes in Bloomington or Dixie Downs.

Every obligation above still applies: taxes, insurance, HOA dues, maintenance, occupancy. HUD counseling is required here too, and the balance still grows. If leaving the house free and clear to your children is the highest priority, this is probably the wrong structure and we will say so. Where it works is when the alternative is draining a portfolio to buy outright, or when a traditional payment would be uncomfortable on fixed income, or when a buyer wants a better home in Entrada, The Ledges or Desert Color while keeping reserves intact. We will model it against a conventional 30-year and against all cash, side by side, showing your cash position each year.

Second Homes and the Occupancy Classification That Governs Everything

Before a lender prices your loan it classifies the property, and the three buckets are not interchangeable.

Shapes of the requirements, not a rate sheet, exact minimums vary by program, score and loan-to-value. FHA, VA, USDA and Utah Housing are all primary-residence programs and are unavailable on a second home.

The tests a lender applies to call something a second home

Underwriters do not take your word for it. To be classified as a second home rather than an investment property, a purchase generally must satisfy all of the following. It must be a reasonable distance from your primary residence, a “second home” three miles from where you live invites scrutiny, while a St. George second home owned by someone living in Salt Lake City, Las Vegas or Southern California passes comfortably. You must have exclusive control over it and occupy it for some portion of the year; you decide when you are there. It cannot be subject to a rental or property management agreement, the test that catches St. George buyers most often. If the home is enrolled in a resort rental program, a nightly-rental management company or a mandatory HOA rental pool, it is not a second home to a conventional underwriter no matter how you think of it. And it must be a one-unit dwelling suitable for year-round occupancy; a timeshare or fractional interest does not qualify.

Occasional rental use does not automatically disqualify a second home under current conventional guidelines, but the property cannot be under a management agreement and the rental income cannot be used to qualify you.

Occupancy misrepresentation is loan fraud

We are direct about this because it comes up in every second-home market and someone always suggests it. Telling a lender a property will be your primary residence or second home when you intend to rent it out is occupancy fraud. It is a material misrepresentation on a federally related mortgage application, you sign an occupancy affidavit at closing attesting to your intent, and the consequences are not theoretical: the note contains an acceleration clause letting the lender call the entire balance due, and there is felony exposure under federal mortgage fraud statutes. No rate improvement is worth that. If the plan is to rent it, we structure it as a rental. If your intent genuinely changes after closing because your life changed, that is a different matter, guidelines contemplate real changes in circumstance.

Short-Term and Vacation Rental Property in Washington County

A meaningful slice of the resort inventory around St. George is bought with nightly-rental income in mind. Financing it correctly means accepting two facts up front. First, a property under a rental management agreement generally cannot be financed as a second home, see the occupancy tests above; plan on investment-property terms. Second, conventional financing typically will not count short-term rental income to qualify you. Agency guidelines are built around long-term lease income documented by a lease and tax returns. Nightly revenue reported on a Schedule C or a platform statement usually does not fit, particularly on a property you have not owned for a full tax year. Buyers routinely show us a projected-revenue report and assume it counts. On a conventional loan, it does not.

The three routes that do work

1. A full investment-property loan. Conventional financing on a non-owner-occupied property, qualified with your personal income and debts, with the higher down payment, pricing and reserves that go with it. If you can carry the payment without help from the rental, this is usually cheapest.

2. A DSCR loan. Debt Service Coverage Ratio financing qualifies the property rather than the borrower, the underwriter compares the income the property generates against the payment including taxes, insurance and HOA. Clear the lender’s ratio and the loan works, typically with no personal income documentation, no tax returns and no employment verification. For an investor whose returns show heavy depreciation, or a self-employed buyer whose write-offs make conventional qualification painful, this is frequently the answer. Some DSCR programs will use short-term rental projections; others insist on long-term market rent. Which lender you go to decides that, which is a good argument for a broker over one bank. See our low-doc investment loan page.

3. Non-QM. Bank statement, asset-based, profit-and-loss and portfolio programs for files that fit nowhere else: a non-warrantable project, an unusual property, a recent credit event. Priced above agency, and they close. Our alternative loan programs page covers the range.

Verify nightly-rental zoning before you write the offer

This is the mistake that costs the most money here, and it has nothing to do with the loan. Short-term rental legality varies by city, by zone within a city, and by HOA, and the HOA restriction is independent of the city rule. A parcel can sit in a zone where the municipality permits nightly rentals while the recorded CC&Rs prohibit them outright. Some communities were built for nightly rental; a subdivision two streets over may ban it. Confirm three things in writing before you offer: the city’s zoning and licensing rules for that specific parcel, the HOA’s recorded restrictions, and whether any required permit or license actually transfers to a new owner. A listing that advertises “great STR potential” is marketing, not a zoning determination. We have watched buyers close a DSCR loan underwritten to nightly income and then learn the HOA prohibits stays under 30 days. The loan was fine. The business plan was not.

Qualifying on Assets Instead of a Paycheck

Plenty of St. George buyers have more than enough money and no employer. Standard income documentation does not describe them, and a bank loan officer working from a single guideline set will sometimes tell them they do not qualify. They almost always do, through a different door.

Asset depletion converts a pool of liquid assets into a monthly income figure for qualifying purposes. The underwriter takes eligible assets, typically checking, savings, brokerage and vested retirement funds, discounts accounts subject to market volatility or early-withdrawal treatment, and divides the remainder over a set number of months to produce a monthly income equivalent. You are not required to liquidate anything; the calculation establishes capacity. Agency programs have their own narrower version for retirement and employment-related assets, while portfolio and non-QM lenders use broader divisors and different haircuts. The spread between them is wide enough to change whether a given borrower qualifies, which is exactly what a broker is for.

Retirement, pension and Social Security income is perfectly ordinary qualifying income when documented properly: award letters, 1099s, recent statements showing deposits, and evidence the income will reasonably continue. For pensions and Social Security, continuance is usually presumed. For IRA or 401(k) distributions, the underwriter needs to see the account holds enough to sustain withdrawals for the required period, and typically that distributions have already begun and are regular. Setting up systematic monthly distributions a few months before you apply is often the single most useful thing a retiring borrower can do, worth a phone call to plan before you start house hunting.

The gross-up on non-taxable income is worth real money and many borrowers have never heard of it. Income not subject to federal income tax, the non-taxable portion of Social Security, certain disability and VA benefits, may be grossed up for qualifying, because the underwriter is measuring obligations against spendable income. The lender adds a percentage back before running your debt-to-income ratio; the permitted percentage varies by program and you generally must document that the income is in fact untaxed. The practical effect: a borrower told they were slightly over the DTI limit often is not. If a lender ran your numbers on the raw benefit amount, get a second opinion. This is a frequent, quiet reason St. George retirees are told no by someone who should have said yes.

Condo and PUD Project Review in a Resort Market

If you are buying an attached unit near the golf and resort corridors, the lender underwrites the project before it underwrites you, and resort markets fail these tests more often than ordinary suburban ones. Three characteristics do the damage.

Investor concentration. Agency guidelines limit how much of a project can be non-owner-occupied when you are financing a primary residence, and limit how much any single entity can own. A development where most units are second homes or rentals will struggle. Second-home purchases get more leeway on the occupancy ratio than primary purchases, which is a nuance worth knowing, but heavy investor ownership still causes problems.

Rental pools and mandatory rental programs. A project that runs a rental pool, offers hotel-like services such as a front desk, daily housekeeping or centralized reservations, or requires owners to participate in a rental program, reads to an underwriter as a condotel, a hotel-like operation rather than a residential condominium. Condotels are ineligible for standard agency financing outright. That is a project characteristic, not a reflection of you or the unit.

Short-term rental activity. Even without a formal pool, substantial nightly-rental activity can push a project toward commercial or condotel character. Add the usual agency concerns, reserve funding, deferred maintenance, pending litigation, delinquent assessments, commercial space percentage, and the failure rate in resort inventory is meaningfully higher than in a standard Utah subdivision. Planned unit developments get a lighter review than condominiums but are not exempt; a PUD whose HOA carries litigation or a badly underfunded reserve can still create problems.

When a project fails, the answer is usually non-warrantable financing. As a broker we place these with portfolio lenders who write non-warrantable condo and condotel loans and underwrite the building to their own standards. Expect a larger down payment and a rate premium. These loans close, and for a resort unit in a project that will never be agency-approved they are the realistic path. Send us the project name before you write. We can usually tell you within a day whether it is likely to pass, which is a far better time to learn it than three weeks into a contract.

Washington County Property Tax, and the Second-Home Trap

Property tax is one of the genuine reasons people move here, and the numbers support it. Utah exempts 45% of a primary residence’s fair market value, so an owner-occupant is taxed on 55% of value, covering the dwelling plus up to one acre. Washington County’s 2025 average total rate was 0.7584%, second lowest among Utah’s major counties, behind only Cache.

Calculated on 55% of market value using 2025 county average total rates from the Utah State Tax Commission. Individual tax areas within a county vary. A specific address can differ meaningfully from the county average.

On an identical $600,000 primary residence, Washington County runs about $963 a year less than Salt Lake County, roughly $80 a month off your escrow. For a household relocating from a high-tax state the gap against where they came from is often several times larger.

Now the part almost nobody tells second-home buyers

The 45% primary residential exemption applies to a primary residence. A true second home, one that is not the owner’s principal residence, does not receive it. Without the exemption the property is taxed on 100% of market value instead of 55%, and the bill is dramatically higher than the headline figure every relocation article quotes.

Illustrative, at the 2025 county average rate. Your actual tax area rate and the assessor’s determination of residential status govern. Utah law does let a rented home qualify when occupied 183 or more consecutive days as a tenant’s primary residence, which does not help a nightly rental.

Read those two rows together. A second home in low-tax Washington County can carry a higher annual property tax bill than a primary residence in high-tax Salt Lake County, because the exemption matters more than the rate. Roughly $170 a month of difference lands directly in your escrow and directly in your qualifying ratios. So when we pre-approve a second-home purchase we underwrite the unexempted figure, not the number on the listing, the listing usually reflects the seller’s exempted bill, and a pre-approval built on the wrong tax number falls apart at underwriting. Conversely, if you are buying a former second home or nightly rental that will become your primary residence, the bill should drop once the exemption is applied, but timing varies. Ask the Washington County Assessor how the parcel is currently classified before you write.

Washington County Loan Limits and Jumbo Territory

2026 conforming limits per FHFA, announced November 25, 2025. FHA forward limits per HUD Mortgagee Letter 2025-23, effective for case numbers assigned on or after January 1, 2026.

Twenty-five of Utah’s twenty-nine counties sit at the $832,750 baseline; only Summit and Wasatch ($1,150,000), Wayne ($997,050) and Grand ($839,500) are above it. Two things are worth flagging. Washington County’s FHA limit is higher than Utah County’s and lower than Salt Lake County’s, so buyers arriving from the Wasatch Front should not carry assumptions with them. And jumbo underwriting is a different animal: tighter reserves, more documentation, and tighter still on a second home or investment property. Get pre-approved on jumbo guidelines specifically rather than assuming a conforming pre-approval carries over. Jumbo lenders also differ widely on how they treat asset-based qualification and retirement income, which matters enormously in this market.

Utah Housing in Washington County

Not everyone buying here is retiring here, the local workforce buys too, and Utah Housing Corporation is the state’s down payment assistance engine. Washington County’s FirstHome income caps are $118,000 for a one-to-two-person household and $135,700 for three or more, with a maximum purchase price of $635,300. The income caps are among the state’s lowest while the price ceiling is comparatively generous, a combination that says a lot about how far local wages sit below local home prices.

Three programs are active: FirstHome (660 minimum score, first-time buyers, with exceptions for single parents and veterans), the FHA/VA product (620 minimum, open to repeat buyers, $165,200 income cap statewide), and Freddie Mac HFA Advantage (680 minimum, reduced mortgage insurance). Assistance comes as a 30-year fixed second mortgage in two shapes: traditional lends up to 6% of the first mortgage, capped at $27,500, at your first-mortgage rate plus one percent with a hard cap of 8%, amortizing; deferred lends up to 3.5%, same $27,500 cap, at 3.5% deferred simple interest with no monthly payment, due at sale, refinance or maturity.

Worth knowing: Utah Housing currently lists HomeAgain, NoMI and Score as suspended. If you were told about one of those, that information is out of date. Every Utah Housing program requires the home to be your primary residence, none of it applies to a second home or a rental.

USDA: Not in St. George, But Yes in Hurricane

USDA Rural Development financing is the only true zero-down purchase program open to buyers who are not veterans, and it carries a modest upfront guarantee fee and annual fee rather than conventional monthly mortgage insurance. It is a genuinely good loan, and it is worth knowing exactly where it reaches.

St. George itself is not eligible. We checked against USDA’s live property eligibility mapping in August 2026, not a stale lender chart. The city sits inside the mapped urbanized area and is out. Hurricane is eligible: roughly twenty minutes east, which means a buyer who cannot assemble a down payment has a zero-down option a short drive from the job, the hospital and the airport.

The critical warning: eligibility is drawn to parcel precision. The boundary follows neither city limits nor zip codes, and two houses across the street from one another can differ. Maps are redrawn as urbanized areas expand. That is exactly what happened to several Wasatch Front communities that were eligible a few years ago and are not now. Never assume, and never rely on a listing that advertises “USDA eligible.” Send us the exact address and we will check the current map before you write. USDA also applies household income limits and requires the home to be your primary residence, so it does nothing for second homes or rentals. Our USDA rural housing page has the program details.

Closing Costs and Timeline in St. George

Buyers relocating from California, Nevada, Arizona or Colorado are consistently surprised by how small a Utah closing statement is. Utah has no real estate transfer tax and no documentary stamp tax, nothing is owed based on sale price. Recording is a flat per-document fee, identical whether the home sold for $300,000 or $1.5 million; H.B. 38, passed in the 2026 session, raised recorder fees effective May 6, 2026, taking Washington County to $45 per document. In Nevada or Florida the same transaction would carry transfer or stamp taxes running into the thousands.

What actually moves the number here is lender fees, title insurance and prepaid escrows, and on a second home the escrow line is larger than buyers expect, for the unexempted-tax reason above. Our fees run about 25% below many competitors and we charge no processing or junk fees, which on a typical Washington County purchase is worth more than every recording fee in the state combined.

On timeline: we close in three weeks or less on a clean file. What extends a St. George closing is predictable: project review in a resort development, HUD counseling scheduling on a reverse mortgage, appraisal turn times in outlying areas, and second-home files where reserves and the true tax figure need documenting. All foreseeable, which is why we surface them before you are under contract rather than after. Axent Funding has brokered Utah mortgages since 2002, and most of what we do in this market is knowing which question to ask before the clock starts. Start online through our secure application or call 801-576-9336 and talk to a person.

Neighborhoods and Communities We Serve

We finance homes across St. George and Washington County: Bloomington, Bloomington Hills, Green Valley, Dixie Downs, Little Valley, Desert Color, Entrada, The Ledges, Sun River and SunRiver, Tonaquint, Middleton, Santa Clara, Ivins, Washington City, Coral Canyon and Hurricane.

The loan question changes by community. Bloomington and Dixie Downs bring older housing stock and the appraisal condition calls that come with it, relevant on FHA and on any HECM, since both apply FHA property standards. Entrada, The Ledges and Desert Color push past the conforming ceiling into jumbo. Sun River is an age-restricted active adult community where reverse mortgages and HECM for Purchase come up constantly. Coral Canyon, Santa Clara and Ivins carry the heaviest concentration of second-home and nightly-rental questions along with the HOA restrictions that go with them. Little Valley, Tonaquint, Middleton and Washington City are where many local first-time buyers land and where Utah Housing assistance does the most work. Hurricane is the one place on this list where a zero-down USDA purchase may be available, subject to a parcel-level check.

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