My wife and I are wanting to purchase the house we are renting, and the loan would be through the USDA Rural Development. In the application, it said we need a copy of two years W2s, but we did our taxes online via a public computer the last two years and we don’t have them. I noticed on the IRS website that you can get either a transcript of your W2s for free, or your actual W2s for per year that you request. I can’t afford to get the actual W2s, and we’re wanting to expedite this so we qualify for the K tax credit for first time home buyer (cutoff date being early December). I called the local USDA office and the woman said she "thinks" she needs the actual W2s, but she didn’t sound very sure about that. I’ve read online that you can take a transcript. So any clarity on the subject would help.

Thanks!
In response to not buying the house because we can’t afford the copies… if we bought our house, our bank said that we’d actually SAVE about 0/mo in what we pay on rent. =)