A conforming loan is a conventional mortgage that meets the requirements to be purchased by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. “Conforming” means the loan conforms to their guidelines — on loan amount, credit, documentation, and property type — which allows the lender to sell the loan on the secondary market rather than hold it for the life of the loan.
The most well‑known part of this is the conforming loan limit, which caps how large a loan can be and still qualify. For 2026, the baseline conforming loan limit is $832,750 for a one‑unit property, and this covers most of New Hampshire. Two counties are the exception: Rockingham and Strafford, where higher home values give them a higher conforming loan limit of $962,550 for a one‑unit property. These limits are set annually by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) based on national home price changes, so they typically increase each year. Higher limits also apply to two‑, three‑, and four‑unit properties. The nationwide high‑cost ceiling of $1,249,125 applies only to areas with even higher home values than Rockingham and Strafford.
Loan amount is only part of what “conforming” means, though it’s the part people usually focus on. A loan also has to meet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s broader underwriting guidelines — minimum credit score, maximum debt‑to‑income ratio, down payment requirements, reserve requirements, and property eligibility standards. A loan under the dollar limit that doesn’t meet these other guidelines isn’t a conforming loan either; it would need to go through a different program or be underwritten as a portfolio or non‑QM loan instead.
A loan that exceeds the conforming loan limit is called a jumbo loan. Jumbo loans aren’t eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, so the lender generally has to hold the loan or sell it to a different type of investor. Because that shifts more risk onto the lender, jumbo loans often come with stricter requirements — higher credit scores, larger down payments, or more extensive reserve requirements — though this varies by lender.
Conforming loan limits also matter for FHA loans, though in a related but separate way. FHA sets its own loan limits each year, using the conforming loan limit as part of its calculation. FHA limits are typically lower than the conventional conforming limit in most areas and follow their own county‑by‑county schedule.
In everyday terms, a conforming loan is simply a conventional mortgage that fits inside the box Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have drawn — both in size and in the underwriting guidelines it has to meet. Fitting inside that box is usually what makes conventional financing more available and often more competitively priced than loans that fall outside it.