At a glance: The single-family FHA loan limit for San Bernardino County, California is $355,350. The single-family conforming limit (not FHA-insured) is set slightly higher at $417,000. These are the caps for 2015 specifically — they could change for 2016 in response to higher home prices.
Are you planning to buy a home in San Bernardino County sometime in 2015? Do you need to use a mortgage loan to help finance your purchase? If so, there are some important numbers you need to know about. They’re called loan limits. And as the name would suggest, they can restrict the amount you are able to borrow from a mortgage lender (without venturing into “jumbo” range).
Here’s a more in-depth look at the 2015 loan limits for San Bernardino County, and how they relate to you as a home buyer and mortgage shopper.
What Is a Loan Limit?
A loan limit is the maximum amount of money you can borrow when using different types of mortgage products or programs. Different types of home loans have different caps associated with them. For instance, if you want to use an FHA loan to buy a house in San Bernardino County, you’ll be limited by the mortgage limit imposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). There’s also a cap for “regular” conforming home loans that are not insured by the government.
There are some key differences to understand here:
- With FHA, the maximum loan limit is a “hard” line. You cannot borrow more than that. Period.
- With a conventional (non-government-backed loan), you can exceed the conforming loan limit if you need to. You’ll just have to use a “jumbo” mortgage product that will likely come with a higher down-payment requirement.
Let’s talk about the specific loan limits that apply to San Bernardino County in 2015.
FHA & Conforming Limits for San Bernardino County, 2015
FHA and conforming limits are set at the county level — not the city level. This means that the numbers shown below apply to all cities within San Bernardino County, including (but not limited to) Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Victorville, Rialto, etc. (Here’s a list of caps for all other counties in California, if you’re interested.)
FHA Loan Limits in 2015
- One-family home: $355,350
- Two-family home: $454,900
- Three-family home: $549,850
- Four-family home: $683,350
Notes: In this context, a “one-family home” is a regular single-family house. A “two-family” home is a property with two families living in it, like a duplex. And so on. The FHA caps shown above are the same as last year. They were simply “rolled over” from one year to the next. HUD evaluated the annual change in median home prices for San Bernardino County, from 2014 – 2015, and decided a loan limit increase was not warranted.
Conforming Loan Limits in 2015
- One-unit: $417,000
- Two-unit: $533,850
- Three-unit: $645,300
- Four-unit: $801,950
Notes: The limits shown above apply to “regular” non-FHA home loans. Conforming caps are established by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and are based on median property values in the area. Anything above these amounts is considered a jumbo mortgage loan.
Learn more here
The first thing you’ll notice here is that the limits for conforming home loans in San Bernardino County are different, and slightly higher, than the FHA lending caps. Some counties have the same size limitations for both conforming and FHA-insured products. But San Bernardino is not one of them — it was two separate ranges depending on the loan type.
Well Above Median Home Prices
By design, FHA and conforming loan limits are intended to provide adequate funding for a moderately priced home. If you compare the lending caps shown above to the median sale price for San Bernardino County, you’ll see that this is true.
As of summer 2015, the median price for single-family homes sold in the county was somewhere around $230,000 to $260,000 (depending on the source).
You’ll recall that the FHA loan limit for San Bernardino County is $355,350, while the conforming cap is even higher at $417,000. This means home buyers should have plenty of properties to choose from, while staying within the above-stated limits.
Brandon Cornett
Brandon Cornett is a veteran real estate market analyst, reporter, and creator of the Home Buying Institute. He has been covering the U.S. real estate market for more than 15 years. About the author