Fannie Mae income limits apply only to its affordable lending products, not to standard conventional loans. If you’re applying for a regular Fannie Mae-backed mortgage, there is no income ceiling at all. The caps you may have heard about belong to specific programs: HomeReady restricts household income to 80% of the area median income (AMI) for the property’s location, and RefiNow caps it at 100% of AMI.1Fannie Mae. HomeReady Mortgage Product Matrix2Fannie Mae. RefiNow Expanding Refinance Eligibility for Qualifying Homeowners Because AMI varies by county, the actual dollar limit that applies to you depends on where you’re buying.
Standard Conventional Loans Have No Income Cap
On a regular Fannie Mae conventional mortgage, your salary won’t disqualify you no matter how high it climbs. The main constraint is instead the conforming loan limit, which caps the size of the loan Fannie Mae can buy. For 2026, that limit is $832,750 for a single-family home in most of the country and up to $1,249,125 in high-cost areas.3FHFA. FHFA Announces Conforming Loan Limit Values for 2026 As long as your loan amount fits under that ceiling, your income can be anything.
The income caps only appear when you apply for one of the affordable products designed to help lower-income buyers. Those programs come with real benefits: smaller down payments, reduced mortgage insurance, and looser rules around gift funds. In exchange, you have to earn under the applicable threshold.
The HomeReady 80% AMI Cap
HomeReady is Fannie Mae’s main income-capped mortgage. It’s aimed at creditworthy buyers who can’t easily save a large down payment, and it allows as little as 3% down with no minimum contribution from your own funds. The entire down payment can come from gifts, grants, or Community Seconds financing.4Fannie Mae. HomeReady Mortgage
The catch is the income limit. Total household income for everyone on the loan cannot exceed 80% of the area median income for the property’s location.1Fannie Mae. HomeReady Mortgage Product Matrix The property must be your primary residence, but eligible property types include single-family homes, condos, planned unit developments, co-ops, manufactured housing, and two- to four-unit buildings.5Fannie Mae. HomeReady Mortgage Loan and Borrower Eligibility
How Area Median Income Turns Into a Dollar Figure
There is no single national HomeReady income number. The cap is pegged to the median family income where the property sits, using estimates HUD publishes each year for every metropolitan area and non-metropolitan county in the country. HUD also adjusts those figures for household size, so larger families get higher ceilings.6HUD USER. Income Limits
A few examples make it concrete. If HUD sets your county’s AMI at $100,000, the HomeReady cap is $80,000. In a metro with an AMI of $130,000, the cap is $104,000. In a rural area with an AMI of $65,000, the cap drops to $52,000. Same program, very different limits.
Looking Up the Limit for Your Address
Fannie Mae publishes a free AMI Lookup Tool that lets you search by property address, county, or FIPS code and see immediately whether a given income qualifies for HomeReady.4Fannie Mae. HomeReady Mortgage Lenders pull from the same data, so the answer you get from the tool will match what your loan officer sees.
HUD also publishes the underlying median income figures by state, county, and fiscal year if you want to see the full AMI number and work out the percentages yourself.6HUD USER. Income Limits AMI figures update annually, so confirm the current number with your lender before making decisions based on it.
What Income Counts Toward the Limit
Fannie Mae counts income from every borrower who will be on the mortgage note. That means W-2 wages, self-employment earnings, pensions, Social Security, alimony, child support, and investment income, all verified through tax returns, pay stubs, and third-party data services.5Fannie Mae. HomeReady Mortgage Loan and Borrower Eligibility
One rule catches people off guard. If you receive non-taxable income such as certain Social Security benefits, disability payments, or child support, lenders can “gross it up” by as much as 25%, meaning they inflate the figure to reflect what you’d need to earn pre-tax for the same net amount. The grossed-up number is what gets compared to the AMI cap. So $2,000 of non-taxable monthly income can count as $2,500 against the limit.
Income from people who live in the household but won’t sign the mortgage does not count toward the 80% cap. It can still help your file in another way: lenders may treat non-borrower household income as a compensating factor to justify a higher debt-to-income ratio on the loan itself.
RefiNow: The 100% AMI Cap for Refinancing
HomeReady isn’t the only Fannie Mae product with an income limit. RefiNow is an affordable refinance for homeowners who already have a Fannie Mae-owned mortgage on a single-unit primary residence. Its income cap is set at 100% of AMI, higher than HomeReady’s, so it reaches a broader group of borrowers.2Fannie Mae. RefiNow Expanding Refinance Eligibility for Qualifying Homeowners
To qualify, your current income has to be at or below the AMI for your area, and you’ll need a clean recent payment history (no missed mortgage payments in the past six months and no more than one in the past 12), a loan-to-value ratio up to 97%, and a debt-to-income ratio of 65% or less on the new loan.2Fannie Mae. RefiNow Expanding Refinance Eligibility for Qualifying Homeowners The program is built specifically to lower your monthly payment, so it’s worth checking if you’re currently sitting on an above-market rate and your income lands under the AMI.
How the Lender Confirms You’re Under the Cap
Your lender runs the application through Desktop Underwriter, Fannie Mae’s automated underwriting system, which checks your qualifying income against the AMI limit for the property’s address. DU pulls from the same data as the public AMI Lookup Tool, so if you’ve already checked yourself, the answer shouldn’t change at underwriting.7Fannie Mae. Desktop Underwriter and Desktop Originator
The lender makes the final eligibility determination, but the automated system handles the income-limit compliance check. If you’re close to the ceiling, ask your loan officer to run the numbers early so you know where you stand before you’re deep into an application. Small changes in how income is documented, whether non-taxable amounts are grossed up, and which borrowers appear on the note can move you from one side of the line to the other.