Own a home in San Jose — no SSN required.

You've been told no for years. This is different.

Millions of people in California work, pay taxes, and raise families using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number. A huge share of them live right here in Santa Clara County — home to one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the United States and to enormous Chinese, South Asian, and Latino communities. They frame the houses going up in Cupertino, run the crews and kitchens across Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and Milpitas, care for families from East San Jose to Gilroy, and build the small businesses that hold whole neighborhoods together. And for years, the answer at every bank window has been the same: no SSN, no house.

The Earned Equity Program changes the question. Instead of asking a bank for permission, you buy the home through a program where the financing is built into the sale itself — seller financing, structured for ITIN and DACA holders. You put 3.5% down, you move in, and your monthly payments build your ownership over time. That's why it's called earned equity: you earn your way into the home you're living in.

This is not a mortgage loan — and that's the point.

Let's be precise, because this matters: you do not receive a mortgage loan through this program, and you don't need one. The entire reason ITIN holders get shut out of buying a home is that the traditional mortgage world is built around Social Security numbers, W-2s, and documentation walls that have nothing to do with whether you can afford a house.

The Earned Equity Program steps around that world entirely. It is a seller-financed homeownership program: the sale of the home carries its own financing, agreed between you and the program — no bank application, no SSN requirement. You choose the home, you put 3.5% down, and you make one monthly payment that builds your ownership stake month after month.

What that means in practice: the people reviewing your qualification are looking at your real life — your deposits, your work, your credit from 580 up — instead of running your paperwork against a federal checklist you were never going to pass. Qualification is subject to program underwriting approval, but the wall that kept you out before simply isn't part of this structure.

1. 01 Talk to us — in English or Spanish. Tell us how you earn, what you've saved, and where you want to live. About sixty seconds to start, and checking your options doesn't affect your credit.
2. 02 Show your real income. Bank statements, 1099s, or a profit-and-loss statement — whichever matches how you're actually paid. No W-2s required.
3. 03 Qualify with 3.5% down. ITIN or DACA, credit from 580, debt-to-income considered to 50/60. Subject to program underwriting approval.
4. 04 Move in and build ownership. Your monthly payments build your stake in the home — that's the earned equity. Your house, your yard, your kids' school district.

What you need — and what you don't.

The qualification list is short, and every item on it is something a working Santa Clara family can actually produce:

What you don't need: a Social Security number, W-2s, years of American credit history, or a cosigner with papers. Qualification is subject to program underwriting approval — but the review is built around how families like yours actually live and earn.

Built for the families who build the Valley.

Santa Clara County holds some of the deepest immigrant communities in the country — one of the largest Vietnamese populations in the United States, alongside very large Chinese, South Asian, and Latino communities across San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, and Gilroy. These are the families who keep Silicon Valley standing — and disproportionately the same families the traditional home-buying system was never designed to serve. We see it constantly: households with steady income, real savings, and years of on-time rent who've never once been offered a real path to owning.

Let's be straight about who we are, too. VegaFi is a California brokerage licensed across the state; we're based in the Central Valley, not on a San Jose street corner, and we won't pretend to be your neighborhood office. What we bring instead is fluency in exactly this situation — ITIN and DACA homeownership, complex and self-employed income, and the Spanish that so many Santa Clara households think in. Because this decision deserves to be understood completely, in the language you think in, every word of this guide exists in Spanish at vegafi.com/es/san-jose/itin-loans.html — and our team speaks Spanish on the phone, start to finish. For the wider picture of what we do across this market, our San Jose mortgage broker guide covers every program we offer.

One more honest note about what we won't tell you: we won't promise outcomes, and we won't pretend every family qualifies. Qualification is subject to program underwriting approval. What we will do is give you a straight answer, fast, for free.

ITIN homeownership questions, answered.

Have an SSN? These guides cover traditional mortgage loans.

The Earned Equity Program is not a mortgage loan — if you have a Social Security number and qualify the standard way, one of these traditional paths may fit you better: