We are skeptical it was widespread, because no lender, builder-owned or otherwise, gets to invent its own qualifying rules. Loans get sold into the secondary market, and student debt has specific required calculations in the agency guidelines. How deferred student loans actually have to be counted: - Fannie Mae: if the credit report shows a payment, the lender uses it. If it shows $0, or the loan is deferred or in forbearance, the lender uses 1% of the outstanding balance or a documented fully amortizing payment. A borrower on an income-driven plan can use the documented actual payment, including $0. - Freddie Mac: if the credit report shows a payment above zero, use it. If it shows $0, use 0.5% of the balance unless documentation supports a higher payment. Freddie requires a payment greater than zero, so a documented $0 income-driven payment does not let you qualify at $0 there. Confirm current guidelines, since these get updated, but the point stands: the treatment is prescribed, and a loan that misses it gets bought back. That math ends a lender fast, which is why a systematic practice of miscalculating student debt is hard to believe. An occasional file slipping through is possible; a business model built on it is not. On temporary buydowns, the piece that clears up most of the worry: borrowers are qualified at the full note rate, never the reduced starting rate. Fannie, Freddie, FHA, and VA all require it, and qualifying anyone on a teaser rate ended with the Dodd-Frank reforms. A buydown softens the payment in the early period; it never lets someone qualify for more house than the permanent rate supports. If someone truly was told they qualified based on a miscalculation, there may be legal recourse worth exploring, though secondhand accounts of another person's file are usually missing pieces. If you are worried about your own situation, the cleanest fix is having us re-run your file against current guidelines so you know exactly where you stand.