Conforming Loan Limits In 2025

When you get a mortgage, there’s a limit to how much you can borrow. On an individual level, this will be determined by how creditworthy you are and how much you can afford to spend each month.

At the industry level, lenders are limited by how much they can lend to borrowers if they want their loans to conform to the standards set forth by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Conventional loans that meet these standards are called conforming loans.

What Is The Conforming Loan Limit?

The FHFA sets conforming loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises that it regulates.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages that meet their standards from lenders and then repackage them into mortgage-backed securities for investors. This process gives lenders the liquidity needed to continue providing home buyers with affordable mortgage loans.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have additional criteria for the loans they purchase, including minimum credit scores, minimum down payments and maximum debt-to-income ratios (DTI). But in general, when people talk about conforming loan standards, they’re talking about loan limits.

2025 Conforming Loan Limits

The baseline conforming loan limit for 2025 is $806,500 – up from $766,550 in 2024. The limit is higher in Alaska and Hawaii, where the number is $1,209,750 for a single-unit property. A full table covering up to four units is below for reference:

If you need a home loan that exceeds the conforming loan limit for your county, you’ll have to get a jumbo loan, which allows higher loan limits. However, these loans are typically harder to qualify for, requiring higher credit scores and larger down payments.

How The Conforming Loan Limits Work

Conforming loan limits are tied to home prices. Each year, the FHFA updates its baseline loan limit based on its House Price Index (HPI) report, which tracks the average increase in home values over the previous year.

The new loan limits are calculated each year based on third-quarter data from the FHFA HPI.  In 2025, the increase was about 5.21%.

Conforming loans are great for consumers because they typically come with lower interest rates than other non-conforming loan types.

If you’re trying to purchase a home in which the sale price exceeds the conforming loan limit for your area, increasing your down payment so that you stay within the limit can be one way to be able to enjoy the benefits of a conforming loan without having to take out a jumbo loan.

Conforming Loan Limits In High-Cost Areas

Home prices vary quite a bit from state to state, and even from county to county. This makes having a single conforming loan limit for the entire country difficult – after all, it’s hard to compare home prices in rural Ohio to home prices in Manhattan, one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country.

This is why the FHFA has a higher limit for areas it deems to be “high cost,” a designation based on an area’s median home values compared to the baseline conforming loan limit.

The exact conforming loan limit varies depending on the median home value in a given area, up to 150% of the baseline conforming loan limit. To see what the current limit is in your county, use the FHFA’s interactive map.

An Example Of High-Cost Area Limits

To see what this might look like in practice, let’s say you’re considering buying a $900,000 house in California.