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Mortgage Merlin

Mortgage data & research

Free, structured datasets we built from primary government sources and keep in sync with the pages on this site. Journalists, researchers and analysts are welcome to use them — republish any figure or the full CSVs under CC BY 4.0 with attribution and a link to this page.

Last updated July 2026 · Need a custom cut (one state, one metro, year-over-year)? Ask us — we’ll run it for free.

2026 conforming loan limits — every high-cost county

FHFA publishes the 2026 limits as a spreadsheet of all 3,000+ U.S. counties. This dataset is the useful subset: the 156 counties above the $832,750 national baseline, with exact 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-unit limits and FIPS codes. 71 of them sit at the $1,249,125 ceiling; 85 fall in between — the “intermediate” counties where the local limit is easiest to get wrong. 20 states and territories are represented.

Download CSV (156 counties)

The 12 highest intermediate counties

Every county below is above the national baseline but below the ceiling — the exact figures come from the FHFA county file, not interpolation.

CountyState1-unit limit4-unit limit
Kalawao CountyHI$1,299,500$2,499,100
Maui CountyHI$1,299,500$2,499,100
Garfield CountyCO$1,209,750$2,326,875
Pitkin CountyCO$1,209,750$2,326,875
Calvert CountyMD$1,209,750$2,326,875
Bergen CountyNJ$1,209,750$2,326,875
Essex CountyNJ$1,209,750$2,326,875
Hudson CountyNJ$1,209,750$2,326,875
Hunterdon CountyNJ$1,209,750$2,326,875
Middlesex CountyNJ$1,209,750$2,326,875
Monmouth CountyNJ$1,209,750$2,326,875
Morris CountyNJ$1,209,750$2,326,875

Browse the same data as web pages: loan limits by state.

Methodology

Parsed verbatim from the official FHFA full-county loan-limit file (source .xlsx, retrieved 2026-06-18) by an ingest script — no figure is hand-entered or estimated. The CSV above is regenerated from the same committed dataset on every site build, so it cannot drift from the pages that cite it. Official cross-checks: FHFA county loan-limit lookup · FHA county loan-limit lookup.

USDA high-cost income-limit areas

USDA publishes its guaranteed-loan income limits only as a 345-page PDF and a lookup form — there is no official bulk file. We parsed the authoritative table into structured data: 643 areas across 48 states where the limit exceeds the national standard of $119,850 (1–4 person household) / $158,250 (5–8 person), figures in effect as of June 2026. Alaska’s two-tier road-system limits are carried as per-row notes.

Download CSV (643 areas)

Highest-limit areas

Area1–4 person limit5–8 person limit
Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA MSA$265,100$349,900
San Francisco, CA HUD Metro FMR Area$238,200$314,450
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA HUD Metro FMR Area$229,350$302,750
Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA MSA$203,000$268,000
Salinas, CA MSA$199,900$263,900
Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA HUD Metro FMR Area$194,550$256,850
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA MSA$193,050$254,850
Nantucket County, MA$190,450$251,400

Check a specific address with the interactive tool on the USDA loans guide.

Methodology

Parsed from USDA’s official adjusted-income-limits table (rd-grhlimitmap.pdf) with a coordinate-aware PDF parser, validated row-by-row against USDA’s own eligibility tool for known areas and against per-state row counts. Where a figure could not be verified it was excluded rather than estimated.

Citing & embedding

Cite as “Mortgage Merlin analysis of FHFA/USDA data” with a link to mortgagemerlin.com/data. A ready-to-paste snippet:

<p>The 2026 conforming loan limit is $832,750 in most U.S. counties,
rising to a $1,249,125 ceiling in 156 designated high-cost counties.
Source: <a href="https://www.mortgagemerlin.com/data">Mortgage Merlin — 2026 loan-limit dataset</a>, from FHFA data.</p>

Educational information only — not financial advice. Verify current figures against the official sources above before relying on them. Mortgage Merlin is a publisher, not a lender or broker; see our editorial policy.

Explore the data as pages