Stephanie Heaton - A GUIDE TO FINANCING YOUR BIGGEST LIFE PURCHASE

insured or guaranteed in any way by the government.

Some typical government-insured loan types are the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) program, the Veterans Affairs (VA) program, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) program. There are others and borrowers should be encouraged to search for programs that could benefit them, depending on their situation.

TYPES OF MORTGAGE SIZE

The size of a mortgage is split into two categories: conforming and jumbo. A conforming loan is one that conforms to the underwriting guidelines of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the two government- controlled real estate investment corporations. Their guidelines can get complicated, but generally all you need to know is that mortgages need to be less than a certain amount of money in order to conform to the guidelines. The amount of money that determines conformity changes from time-to-time, most recently in 2019. A jumbo loan, as you might have guessed, is one that is larger than the conforming price set by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. These loans are for enough money that they present a considerable risk to the lender, and therefore are harder for borrowers to obtain. In case this isn’t clear, let’s assume that this year the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac conforming limits are both the same at $500,000. A conforming loan will be anything below $500,000 and a jumbo loan will be anything above $500,000. However, due to the cost-of-living being different across the country, certain areas have higher conforming loan limits than

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