Found a 2-4 unit you'd live in? Check whether the loan works.

What changes when the house has more than one front door

A two-to-four unit building you live in still gets a home loan, the same FHA, VA or conventional mortgage a single-family buyer uses. Three things are different. The loan limit is higher, and it scales with the number of units. Lenders can count part of the rent from the other units as your income. And the rules get stricter at three and four units: FHA adds a test that the rents must cover the payment, and FHA wants three months of payments in the bank after closing on three or four units, while VA (when rent is counted) and Fannie Mae’s automated approvals want six.

The two numbers to check first

Start with your county’s 2026 loan limit for the unit count you’re looking at. FHA’s floor for a fourplex is $1,041,125, and conventional loans have their own, higher limits. Then put the building into the calculator. On a triplex or fourplex with FHA, the self-sufficiency test can stop a deal that’s well under the loan limit; the guide to that test works an example.

Who runs this

Porchlight is operated by Janover Capital LLC, a commercial mortgage brokerage. It isn’t a lender, a real estate brokerage or a government site, and it isn’t affiliated with HUD, FHA, VA, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Every limit and rule here links to the agency document it came from, with its date. More on the about page and the disclosures.