The letter must explain who is gifting the money, where the donor's funds are coming from and the relationship between the donor and the recipient. A gift letter for a mortgage shows your lender that you don't need to repay gift money toward your down payment.Use our mortgage gift letter Here's a sample gift letter you can use to prove that the money is truly meant as an outright gift, with no expectation of repayment. What should you include in a gift letter? Gift letters don't typically need to be notarized. However, each mortgage lender sets its own requirements. A mortgage gift letter is a document that helps satisfy the requirement that a borrower's down payment funds come from legitimate sources. It states how much you're getting and from whom. A gift letter is proof to the lender that the funds were gifted to a homebuyer for their home purchase, and not a loan or borrowed money.