2026 California Conforming Loan Limits by County

What a conforming loan limit means.

A conforming loan is a conventional mortgage that fits the rules Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac use to buy loans from lenders — and the headline rule is size. Each year the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) sets the maximum loan amount those two companies may acquire, as required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA). The figures on this page are the limits for mortgages they acquire in calendar year 2026.

The limit is a loan-size ceiling, nothing more. It does not describe a rate, a program, or what a home may cost. Everything else in this guide follows from that one definition.

Baseline vs. high-balance conforming.

The national baseline for 2026 is $832,750 for a one-unit home, and it applies in 41 of California's 58 counties. In counties FHFA designates as high-cost, the limit is higher — up to the $1,249,125 ceiling. A loan that is above the baseline but at or under its county's higher limit is still conforming; lenders usually label it high-balance (Freddie Mac says "super conforming"). Lenders often treat high-balance loans as their own pricing category, so the label can matter even though the loan is conventional either way.

Why some California counties have higher limits.

HERA's formula: where 115% of the local median home value exceeds the baseline, the county's limit is set at 115% of that median, capped at 150% of the baseline ($1,249,125 for 2026). FHFA measures medians by metropolitan area, which is why neighboring counties in the same metro share a figure — Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Marin, Orange, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz all sit at the ceiling.

7 more counties land between the baseline and the ceiling: San Diego ($1,104,000), Ventura ($1,035,000), Napa ($1,017,750), San Luis Obispo ($1,000,500), Monterey ($994,750), Santa Barbara ($941,850) and Sonoma ($897,000). Every other California county, including the whole Central Valley, uses the $832,750 baseline. Check the county table rather than assuming — Solano and Riverside, for instance, are at the baseline despite their big-metro neighbors.

How the unit count changes the limit.

FHFA publishes four limits per county, one each for one-, two-, three- and four-unit properties. At the baseline those are $832,750, $1,066,250, $1,288,800 and $1,601,750; high-cost counties step up the same way, to $2,402,625 for a fourplex at the ceiling. The figures are FHFA's own rows, not multiples of the one-unit number. That is why a duplex, triplex or fourplex can carry a much larger conventional loan than a single-family home on the same street.

Conforming vs. jumbo (non-conforming).

Any loan above its county-and-unit-count limit is non-conforming, which in practice means a jumbo loan. Jumbo loans are not sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac; each lender or investor sets its own guidelines for them (reserves, documentation, down payment, appraisal review), and prices them on its own sheet. That makes jumbo neither a worse loan nor a better one — just a loan that lives in a different market, where shopping lenders matters even more.

It limits the loan amount, not the purchase price.

There is no conforming price limit. The limit applies to the loan amount — the price minus your down payment. A $950,000 home in a baseline county is perfectly compatible with a conforming loan if the down payment brings the loan to $832,750 or less. The worked examples below show the arithmetic both ways.

Under the limit is not an approval — or a rate.

Being within the limit only means the loan size is eligible for sale to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Approval still depends on credit, income and debt-to-income ratio, loan-to-value, assets and reserves, occupancy, the appraisal, and each lender's overlays. And the limit says nothing about the interest rate: pricing varies by lender, by your profile, by the loan's size relative to the limit, and from day to day. Nothing on this page is a quote, a pre-qualification, or an eligibility determination — see how LoanGuru prices a scenario for what a real number looks like.

FHFA conforming limits are not FHA limits.

The names collide, and the schedules differ. FHFA sets the conforming limits on this page for conventional loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FHA loan limits are set separately by HUD for FHA-insured loans; they are derived from the conforming figures but use their own floor and ceiling, so a county's FHA limit is often lower than its conforming limit. If you are weighing the two programs, read Conventional or FHA and look up the FHA figure for your county on HUD's FHA mortgage limits lookup — never assume the numbers match.