Clearfield Utah Down Payment Assistance: What’s Actually Open Right Now

Four Doors, and They Don’t Keep the Same Hours

You found the city’s page first. Everyone does. Then you found a phone number that rings somewhere unhelpful, a PDF with a 2020 date stamped on it, and a county program whose own website says the money’s gone.

So here’s the answer before the explanation. Right now, in September 2026, the assistance a Clearfield buyer can actually act on runs through Utah Housing — the statewide programs — plus a $2,500 grant if you’ve served. Davis County’s program is closed until 2027. The city’s own grant can’t be confirmed to exist at all.

Down payment assistance keeps office hours. Not the polite kind you can knock on anyway — the kind set by a legislature, a funding cycle and a county budget, where the door is either open the month you’re buying or it isn’t. Four doors on this street. One’s open. One’s shut with a date on it. One has a notice taped to it from 2020 and nobody behind the glass. And one opens only if you’ve worn a uniform.

Clearfield Utah down payment assistance isn’t one program you either get or you don’t. It’s four, on four different clocks. Let’s start with the one that’s open.

Start Here: Utah Housing, the Door That’s Actually Open

Utah Housing Corporation runs the statewide programs, and for a Clearfield buyer this week they’re the whole ballgame. Three of them, in Utah Housing’s own naming: FirstHome, FHA/VA Mortgage, and Freddie Mac HFA Advantage. You qualify for one of those first mortgages, and the assistance rides behind it.

The assistance itself is one product, not a menu. Utah Housing’s program form describes a DPA Second loan of up to 6% of the first mortgage amount — and the word doing the work there is second. It’s a second mortgage sitting behind your first, not a grant, not free money, and you’ll repay it (which is the sentence most pages about this leave out, so consider it said).

There’s also a separate award for newly built homes: up to $20,000 from Utah Housing’s new-construction program, toward down payment, buydown and closing costs. Worth knowing here specifically, because the city’s own grant shuts new construction out entirely — so if you’re buying one of the new builds going up around town, this is the program that wants you and the city’s isn’t.

One condition to carry with you: Utah Housing’s down payment assistance is only available through a lender it has approved to participate in its programs. That’s Utah Housing’s rule, not a universal one — the veteran grant below accepts any lender licensed in Utah, and Davis County doesn’t require lender approval at all. Ask any lender you’re talking to which of the three they’re set up for.

Our full walkthrough of Utah’s down payment assistance programs covers how the layers stack statewide. This page is about which of them reach Clearfield today.

The $2,500 That Gets Missed in a Base Town

Clearfield sits next to Hill Air Force Base, which means a large share of the people reading this are eligible for something most Utah buyers aren’t.

The Utah Veteran First-Time Homebuyer Grant is $2,500, administered by the Utah Department of Veterans and Military Affairs. Two eligibility details get misreported constantly, so here they are from UDVMA’s own page: it covers veterans who separated within the last five years and current members of the military — Active Duty, Reserve and Guard. Owning a home in another state doesn’t disqualify you, which matters in a town where a good chunk of the neighborhood arrived on orders. You’ll need to occupy the home within 30 days of signing your closing documents, and dual-military couples receive one grant between them.

On status, the honest position: UDVMA’s page carries no closure notice today. What it does say is that the program “is subject to funding availability based on appropriations from the Utah Legislature” — so it’s real, it isn’t advertised as closed, and it can run dry without warning. Call UDVMA at 801-326-2372 before you build a plan on it.

And the bigger point in a base town: the grant is the small lever. VA financing is usually the large one — no down payment, no monthly mortgage insurance. Also, and people get this wrong for years at a time: VA eligibility doesn’t expire. Separating, renting for a decade and assuming the benefit left with the uniform is a common and expensive mistake.

Davis County’s Big One Is Closed Until 2027

This is the program that should lead every conversation about buying in Clearfield, and right now you can’t have it.

Davis County runs a homeownership assistance loan of up to $50,000, and the county states it can be combined with the state’s assistance for up to $70,000 toward a purchase in Davis County. There are no monthly payments at all — it comes due when you sell, or when you refinance for a reason the county doesn’t approve. It can go toward principal reduction, a permanent interest rate buy-down capped at $10,000, or up to 50% of your required down payment and closing costs. The county’s 2026 income thresholds run from $66,050 for one person to $124,500 for eight. Two things make it unusually reachable: it is not restricted to first-time buyers, and Davis County does not pull your credit to apply.

Now the part the older write-ups have backwards. The county’s own page says: “The 2026 program funds have been exhausted. Applications will re-open on July 1, 2027.” Not 2026. 2027. If you read somewhere that applications reopened last July, that page is a year behind and it’s costing people their planning.

Here’s a flat opinion you’re welcome to argue with: don’t wait for it. Twenty-two months of renting to catch a program that may or may not come back funded at the same level isn’t a savings strategy, it’s a bet on a county budget. Buy when your own numbers work, and if you’re still looking in the spring of 2027, set a reminder. (Shopping elsewhere in the county rather than in the city? Davis County home loans covers the wider area.)

The City’s Own Grant, and the Honest Answer About It

Clearfield City published a down payment program, and everything below is what its program document says. Whether you can still get it is a separate question, and I’ll get to that, because it’s the most important paragraph on this page.

What the document describes: a grant that matches you one to one, capped at $5,000. You bring at least $1,000 of your own money — earnest money and prepaid costs count toward it — and the grant matches what you put in. It can cover up to half your required down payment, reasonable closing costs, or required upfront mortgage insurance.

The constraints are the story. The property has to be a detached single-family home — townhomes, condominiums and other attached homes are explicitly ineligible. New construction is excluded. Its first-time rule runs three years, with the usual carve-outs for displaced homemakers and single parents who previously owned only with a spouse (worth flagging, because other Utah cities use a two-year window and the phrase isn’t standardized). Forgiveness runs seven years: ten percent for each year you live there across the first six, with the remaining forty percent credited once you complete the seventh. And the property value must not exceed $325,000.

Now the paragraph that matters. That $325,000 cap is printed in a document headed July 2020 (the cap itself is marked “Updated July 2020,” and the income table inside it is FY 2020). The Davis Community Housing Authority, which used to administer the program, stopped administering homebuyer programs on June 30, 2023 — its own site says so. And Clearfield City publishes no down payment assistance page today; the community development URL that would hold one returns a 404. The program document is still sitting on the city’s server, still downloadable, with nobody obviously behind it.

So: I can’t tell you this grant is open, and I can’t tell you it’s dead. What I can tell you is to call Clearfield City Hall at 801-525-2700 and ask directly, before you count a dollar of it in your plan. If it’s alive, it’s a narrow door — five thousand dollars on a detached, existing home under a six-year-old price cap — but it’s five thousand dollars.

The Ceiling Clearfield Buyers Actually Run Into

Here’s where the city grant and the state programs part company, and it’s worth seeing side by side.

Utah Housing’s purchase-price limit for Davis County is $778,500 — the highest tier in the state, shared with Morgan, Summit, Wasatch and Weber, and roughly $112,000 above Salt Lake County’s $666,600. (One caveat that matters: that ceiling applies to FirstHome. Utah Housing’s FHA/VA and HFA Advantage programs don’t limit what you can pay for the house at all.)

The Clearfield city grant caps the property at $325,000.

Same buyer, same town, same afternoon of house-hunting — and the two programs are looking at almost entirely different sets of houses. That’s not a knock on the city program. It’s the reason you don’t plan around it as your main event. The state’s ceiling will follow you almost anywhere in Clearfield. The city’s will not. Cross a county line and the ceiling moves again — Tooele County carries the tightest Utah Housing income limits in the state against a purchase-price cap that matches Salt Lake’s, which our guide to Tooele first time buyer programs works through.

Working out what you can actually afford turns those ceilings into something you can shop against.

The Conditions Nobody Puts in the Headline

The Clearfield program document carries requirements that never make it into the summaries, and any one of them can end an application:

• A HUD-approved homebuyer education certificate is required. Start it early — it’s not a same-day errand.
• Your first mortgage has to be a fixed-rate FHA, VA or conventional loan.
• The grant is non-assumable — it doesn’t transfer to whoever buys the house from you.
• Taking out a second mortgage triggers repayment, as does selling, transferring, or refinancing without prior authorization. That’s the one that catches people: a HELOC two years in is a repayment event.
• The city holds a second-position trust deed, and on a pre-1978 home you’ll need a visual lead assessment.

The first-time definitions differ program by program too, which is why another Utah city’s program can call you a first-time buyer when Clearfield’s wouldn’t. Check each one separately.

What to Actually Do This Week

1. Get pre-approved first. Applying for assistance before you know what you qualify for is backwards, and it’s the most common reason people who genuinely qualify end up with nothing. What a pre-approval actually means is worth five minutes.
2. Run the Utah Housing programs. They’re open, they’re the largest thing you can reach today, and the purchase-price ceiling in Davis County is generous.
3. If you’ve served, call UDVMA. 801-326-2372. Ask whether the grant is funded right now.
4. Make one call to Clearfield City Hall. 801-525-2700. Ask whether the down payment program is still running and who administers it.
5. Put Davis County in your calendar for spring 2027 — and don’t wait on it.

The Part That Isn’t Your Fault

A person buying their first house in Clearfield is expected to find a city program whose administering agency closed three years ago, a county loan that’s been out of money since spring, a veteran grant run by a different state department, and a set of statewide programs with their own ceilings and their own lender rules — then work out which are open this month, which stack, and which order to apply in.

Nobody in that position is failing at research. The information isn’t hidden; it’s scattered across four agencies, and not one of them has any reason to tell you what the other three are doing. The county doesn’t mention the city. The city hasn’t mentioned itself since 2020. You’re being asked to assemble a picture out of four pieces that were never cut to fit together, while also buying a house, which is already the largest financial thing most people ever do.

That’s a bad deal, and it isn’t the kind you can study your way out of. It just takes somebody who already knows which doors are open.

Let’s Find Out Which Ones Are Open for You

Sorting out Clearfield Utah down payment assistance takes about ten minutes on the phone. We’ll tell you which programs are open this month, which ones your household actually clears, and which are worth your time — including when the honest answer is “skip that one.”

We communicate constantly, so you’ll always know where your file stands and what’s next. We explain everything in plain English, including what a forgivable grant actually costs you if you move in year four. And because we’re brokers, we shop hundreds of lenders to find the best rate, with some of the lowest fees in Utah.

Call (801) 891-1846 or email [email protected]. ClearPath Utah Mortgage, 10168 South 2505 East, Sandy, UT 84092.

Four doors. One’s open today. Ten minutes and you’ll know which of the other three are worth waiting on — which is nine minutes and fifty seconds more than anyone else is going to hand you.