FHA Loan Limits 2026: Complete State-by-State Guide

If you're planning an FHA purchase in 2026, the number that decides whether your loan works is your county's FHA limit. Not your credit score, not your down payment, not even the rate. The limit is the ceiling on what the FHA will insure, and in 2026 those limits moved in a direction buyers haven't seen in years: down.

The 2026 FHA floor for a single-family home sits at $498,257, down from $524,225 in 2025. In high-cost counties, the ceiling is $1,149,825, down from $1,209,750. This is the first meaningful decline in FHA limits since 2014, and it changes the math for anyone buying in a county where prices are moderate or where they crept close to the old ceiling.

This guide walks through the 2026 limit structure unit by unit, explains exactly how HUD sets the numbers, shows you how to find your county's limit, and reminds you what FHA mortgage insurance will cost on top of the purchase. If you want to see how a limit translates into a monthly payment, run the numbers through our mortgage calculator after you look yours up.

The 2026 FHA Limit Structure at a Glance

FHA limits work on a floor-and-ceiling system. Every county gets a limit at or between the two anchors:

• The floor is 65% of the conforming loan limit, which lands at $498,257 for 2026. Low-cost counties, which is most of the country, use this number.
• The ceiling is 150% of the conforming loan limit, or $1,149,825. High-cost counties like San Francisco, New York, and Washington D.C. sit here.
• Everything between is set at 115% of the county's median home price, per the National Housing Act.

The conforming limit that anchors all of this is $766,550 for 2026, down from $806,500 in 2025. Since the FHA floor and ceiling are simple percentages of that number, the whole FHA schedule moved down with it.

Say you're buying in a 2026 FHA high-cost area like Santa Clara County, California, where the median price keeps the limit pinned at the ceiling. You can finance up to $1,149,825 with 3.5% down, which means you need roughly $40,244 in cash for the down payment alone, before closing costs. In a floor county like most of West Virginia or Mississippi, the ceiling on your loan is $498,257, so a $350,000 house works fine but a $520,000 house does not, unless you bring $21,743 in cash to get the loan under the cap.

That distinction is the whole game in 2026. The limit is not a suggestion, and it's not a lender preference. It's the maximum base loan amount the FHA will insure in your county, and going over it forces you into a different loan product.

Multi-unit figures are derived from the 2026 conforming limit schedule using FHA's statutory unit-count formulas. Exact county figures vary and are published by HUD. FHA allows slightly higher limits in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Notice the pattern in that table. The floor scales with unit count because HUD expects a 4-unit building to cost more than a 1-unit house, and the ceiling scales too. A buyer using an FHA loan to purchase a duplex in a floor county can go up to roughly $735,900, which opens up house-hacking opportunities that the 1-unit floor doesn't allow. That's one of the least-known features of FHA lending, and in 2026 it matters more because the gap between single and multi-unit limits widened slightly relative to 2025.

How HUD Sets FHA Loan Limits

The statutory formula is straightforward: each county's FHA limit equals 115% of the area's median home price, bounded by the floor and ceiling. Here's how it plays out with real numbers.

Take a county where the median home price is $300,000. Multiply by 115% and you get $345,000. But the floor is $498,257, so the county gets the floor instead. Now take a county with a $900,000 median price. At 115% that's $1,035,000, which sits between the floor and ceiling, so the county gets $1,035,000. Finally, a county with a $1.4 million median price would compute to $1,610,000, but the ceiling caps it at $1,149,825.

Three things drive year-to-year movement in the limits:

• Median price changes. Counties where home prices rose get higher limits, up to the ceiling. Counties where prices fell or stalled can see limits drop.
• The conforming limit. Since the floor and ceiling are percentages of it, any FHFA adjustment moves the entire FHA band. The 2026 conforming decline from $806,500 to $766,550 pulled the floor down $25,968 and the ceiling down $59,925.
• Rebasing. HUD recalculates median prices on a rolling basis, and the mix of counties that fall in each band shifts every year.

HUD typically publishes the new limits in late December or early January, and they take effect for case numbers assigned on or after the announcement date. If you locked an FHA rate in December 2025 at the old limits, your case number determines which schedule applies to you, which is one more reason to let your loan officer handle the timing.

FHA floor equals 65% of the conforming limit for each year. Source: FHFA conforming limit announcements and HUD FHA mortgage limits. 2020 figures predate the 2021 FHA limit overhaul.

Read that last row again, because it's the story of 2026. After seven straight years of rising limits, the floor fell back to exactly the 2024 level. For a buyer in a floor county, that means a $498,257 cap instead of $524,225, a difference of $25,968 in financing capacity. On a 3.5% down FHA loan at a 6.5% rate, that's roughly $164 less in monthly purchasing power than a 2025 buyer had.

For most buyers the floor decline doesn't bite, because the median home price in floor counties is usually well under $400,000. It matters at the margin: buyers shopping in the $480,000 to $520,000 band in low-cost counties, or anyone in a county whose limit was just under the old ceiling, should recheck the 2026 number before they fall in love with a house.

Which Counties Get High-Cost Limits

HUD designates high-cost areas where the 115% median calculation exceeds the ceiling, and those counties sit at $1,149,825. The big ones follow a familiar pattern: the entire San Francisco Bay Area, most of the Los Angeles and San Diego metros, the New York City five boroughs plus much of the surrounding region, Washington D.C. and its Virginia and Maryland suburbs, Seattle and its suburbs, Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts, Denver, Honolulu, and large parts of South Florida.

Counties in between get a specific number, not a round one. For example, a county with a $700,000 median gets a $805,000 limit at 115%, and that exact figure is what HUD publishes for it. You can't guess these from state lines, because limits vary county by county, and sometimes between adjacent counties that share a metro area.

Here's the practical way to find yours:

1. Go to HUD's FHA mortgage limits page and select 2026 from the year menu.
2. Search by state, then county, or use the interactive map.
3. Match the property type (1 to 4 units) to the limit column.
4. Cross-check with your lender, because lenders occasionally use MSA-level limits that differ from county figures in metro areas.

One trap: the FHA limit applies to the county where the property sits, not where you live. If you rent in a high-cost county and buy in a low-cost one, the property's county wins. The reverse is also true, so a buyer priced out of a $1.1 million home in one county can sometimes find a qualifying property just across the county line, and that's a completely legal, common strategy in 2026.

Once you have your limit, run it through our affordability calculator to see what price range actually fits your income and debts, because the FHA limit is a maximum, not a target.

A State-by-State Look at 2026 FHA Limits

Every state breaks into the same three tiers: floor counties, ceiling counties, and the ones in between. The mix is what varies, and it shapes the practical answer to "what's the FHA limit where I live."

Floor-dominant states. Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, and most of the Great Plains have almost every county at the $498,257 floor. Buyers there rarely think about limits, because the median home price sits well below the cap, but the 2026 floor decline is exactly the kind of thing that bites a buyer shopping in the $480,000 to $520,000 range in a metro-adjacent county.

Ceiling-heavy states. California, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and the D.C. region have large blocks of counties pinned at $1,149,825. In these states the FHA ceiling often exceeds the conforming limit, which is why FHA is the default choice for buyers who need a loan between $766,550 and $1,149,825 without jumbo-level down payments.

Mixed states. Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Washington split the difference, with a handful of high-cost metro counties above the floor and the rest of the state at it. In these states, the county line can be worth six figures of financing capacity, and the exact boundary changes every year as median prices move.

State profiles are generalizations; HUD publishes the authoritative county-by-county limits. Always confirm your specific county before relying on a limit.

The state-level takeaway: don't assume your state is one thing or the other. A buyer in suburban Atlanta is in a county that can flip between the floor and a mid-tier limit from one year to the next, while a buyer in rural Georgia is safely at the floor forever. The map, not the state name, is the source of truth, and the state-by-state framing here is only a starting point for the lookup.

What FHA Limits Mean for Your Down Payment and Payment

The FHA minimum down payment is 3.5%, and it never changes regardless of the limit. What changes is the dollar amount that 3.5% represents. At the floor, 3.5% of $498,257 is $17,439. At the ceiling, it's $40,244. And since the limit caps the loan, not the price, any purchase above the limit requires a down payment large enough to bring the loan back under the cap.

Consider a concrete example. Say you're buying in a county with a $498,257 limit and the house is listed at $515,000. Your loan can't exceed $498,257, so your down payment needs to be at least $16,743, which is 3.25% of the price, plus closing costs. It works, but it's a cashier's check the size of a used car, and plenty of buyers don't plan for it.

Now the monthly side. A $498,257 loan at the current 30-year FHA rate of about 6.25% carries principal and interest of roughly $3,067 per month. Add the annual mortgage insurance premium and you're near $3,250 before taxes and insurance. That's why we built the mortgage calculator to include FHA MIP by default, and why you should always check your debt-to-income ratio before you commit to a payment that large.

The MIP Reminder: FHA Insurance Costs More Than You Think

Every FHA loan carries two mortgage insurance premiums, and both are easy to underestimate.

The upfront premium is 1.75% of the loan amount, financed into the loan rather than paid at closing. On a $498,257 loan that's $8,719 added to the balance. On a $1,149,825 loan it's $20,122. You're paying interest on that premium for the life of the loan, so the true cost is higher than the sticker number.

The annual premium in 2026 is 0.55% of the loan balance for most 30-year loans with 10% or less down, paid in 12 monthly installments. On a $400,000 loan that's $2,200 a year, or about $183 per month. Borrowers with more than 10% down pay 0.50%, about $167 per month on the same loan.

Two rules matter for planning:

• Less than 10% down: MIP stays for the life of the loan. You can only get rid of it by refinancing into a conventional loan.
• 10% or more down: MIP drops off automatically after 11 years, assuming you've made all payments on time.

Compare that to conventional private mortgage insurance, which you can request to cancel at 80% loan-to-value and which drops automatically at 78%. For borrowers who plan to stay in the home long term, that difference can be worth tens of thousands of dollars, which is exactly why our PMI calculator exists. Run both scenarios side by side before you default to FHA.

FHA Limits vs. Conforming Limits: Know the Gap

In 2026 the FHA floor and the conforming limit are separated by exactly $268,293. That's the band where FHA works but conventional doesn't, and it's wider than many buyers assume.

Assumes 3.5% FHA down payment and 3% conventional minimum. Jumbo loans carry their own requirements, typically 20% down and higher credit scores.

That middle row is the one that surprises people. In a floor county, a $550,000 house can't use an FHA loan with a 3.5% down payment, because the loan would be $530,750, above the $498,257 cap. The conventional route with 3% down works fine up to $766,550. So in most of the country, FHA is effectively capped at homes around $515,000 before you start needing a bigger down payment or a different program.

In high-cost counties the situation flips. Conforming stops at $766,550, but FHA reaches $1,149,825, which is why FHA is disproportionately popular in California, New York, and D.C. A buyer putting 3.5% down on a $900,000 home in San Francisco is using FHA precisely because conventional would require a much larger down payment to stay conforming.

How 2026 Limits Interact With Your Credit and DTI

Hitting the limit is one hurdle. Clearing FHA's underwriting is another, and the two stack.

FHA allows a 580 credit score with 3.5% down, and a 500 to 579 score with 10% down, though most lenders overlay a 600 to 620 minimum. The standard DTI ceiling is 43%, and FHA's automated underwriting system can approve up to 50% with compensating factors like strong reserves or a larger down payment.

Here's the 2026 reality check. In a floor county, a buyer with a 640 score, 3.5% down, and a 45% DTI can finance $498,257, but their qualifying income has to support that payment plus their other debts. At a 6.25% FHA rate with MIP, the total housing payment on a $498,257 loan is around $3,450 with taxes and insurance, which means roughly $7,700 in gross monthly income just to hold a 45% DTI. Use our affordability calculator to run your own numbers, because the limit only tells you the maximum loan, not what you can actually afford.

Frequently Asked Questions About FHA Loan Limits

Your Next Step

The 2026 FHA limits are set, and the headline is simple: the floor is $498,257, the ceiling is $1,149,825, and your county's exact number is one lookup away. Before you tour houses, do three things:

1. Look up your county's 2026 FHA limit on HUD's mortgage limits page.
2. Run your payment through our mortgage calculator with MIP included.
3. Get a preapproval from a lender that understands FHA, because limits, MIP, and credit overlays all interact.