How conforming loan limits are set
The limits are not negotiated each year. A formula written into federal housing law is applied to the previous year's figures, and the result is published area by area.
- Move the baseline. The one-unit baseline follows the average of the national house-price changes reported for the year. It is $832,750 in 2026.
- Test each area. An area qualifies for a higher limit when its median home price exceeds 115% of the baseline.
- Cap the result. No area outside Hawaii may exceed 150% of the baseline — $1,249,125 this year. That cap is why 75 counties show exactly the same figure.
- Give Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands a higher base. Their baseline is itself set at 150% of the contiguous figure, so the lowest limit anywhere in them is $1,249,125. Hawaii goes one step further and has its own ceiling, $1,299,500.
- Apply area-wide. The test runs on metropolitan and micropolitan areas, so every county inside one area carries the same number. This year 160 counties above the baseline collapse into just 24 distinct figures.
- Scale the multi-unit limits. Two-, three- and four-unit limits move as fixed multiples of the one-unit limit. In a baseline county the four-unit figure is $1,601,750 for 2026, or 1.9234 times the one-unit figure.
Why the same number repeats so often
3075 of 3235 counties share the $832,750 baseline, and the counties above it are grouped into 24 figures. That is a property of the rule, not of the data — which is why this site publishes one page per figure instead of one page per county.