County loan limits have been officially raised to $766,000.

That’s a big increase.

Now, if you remember a little bit ago, we had released and said, “Hey, tentative county loan limits have been raised to $750,000,” the old number was $726,000.

Then we knew that FHFA, the entity that governs all of this and issues it for the pseudo-government organizations Fanny and Freddy Mack, was saying, “Hey, we’re going to elevate them.”

Just where at? We all started guessing around $750,000 to $760,000. So we started accepting $750,000 loan limit deals.

Well, now it’s officially out. It’s even a little bit higher: $766,550. And in some areas, high-cost areas like LA, Boston area, down in Florida, some of those spots, it can go all the way up to a $1,149,000 – big expansion on some of those higher cost of living areas.

It used to be $1,083,000, some areas around a million. Now, $1.149m – big increase.

Now, here’s the deal: that’s just single family homes.

You get into duplexes, triplexes, quads – 2, 3, 4 units – it can go up to over $2 million.

Now, that’s where we saw the biggest jump, actually, in 4-unit properties in high-cost areas. It used to be around a million and a half; now it’s over $2 million

That’s a dramatic increase in county loan limits.

So, what does this really mean for us, especially those utilizing the VA loan?

If you have no outstanding VA loans, let’s say you’re a buyer, you’re working with a client, it’s a buyer that has no outstanding VA loans, there is no County loan limit you can go up to. We’ve worked with folks on a million, $2 million VA loans, 0% down even.

But the moment that you keep a VA loan outstanding, like, “Hey, I’m PCSing from one location to another and I want to keep that old home as a rental,” now all of a sudden, those county loan limits start to restrict you on the 0% down ability of a VA loan.

How’s that math work?

The basics are: you take the county loan limit of where you’re moving and deduct the total original balance of the VA loans that you have that you’re keeping.

So, if you bought an old home in Texas for a $300,000 VA loan – that was your original balance on it – and that’s what shows on your Certificate of Eligibility, and you’re moving to a new location where the County loan limit’s $766,000, you take $766,000 minus that $300,000, you have up to $466,000 roughly of 0% down ability to go purchase a new home.

And you can even go beyond that. You just got to bring a little bit of a down payment, and you can talk with us about that math, or watch one of our other videos.

But the good news is county loan limits have raised $766,000 as a minimum and on the high end up to over 2 million if you’re dealing with four units and plus.

My name’s Evan Kaufman, your VA loan originator. Hope this helps you win a home with a VA loan.