About Porchlight

Porchlight is a free calculator and data site for people buying a duplex, triplex or fourplex to live in, and for first-time buyers of 5 to 20 unit buildings. It has no listings. It answers the money questions: what your county’s loan limit is, what each loan program asks for, and whether the rents carry the payment.

Porchlight is operated by Janover Capital LLC. Janover Capital’s commercial mortgage desk arranges loans on apartment buildings of five units and up; it’s a brokerage and doesn’t lend its own money. It doesn’t make or arrange home loans on 1-4 unit properties or homes you’ll live in, and it doesn’t pass visitors to residential lenders.

How the site pays for itself

The calculator and the limits are free and need no sign-up. Janover Capital’s business is commercial: if you’re buying a 5-20 unit building, you can send it to the commercial desk from the 5-20 units page, and that’s the only financing request the site takes. For a 2-4 unit home you’ll live in, you choose your own residential lender.

Where the numbers come from

The loan limits come straight from two government files: HUD’s FHA forward mortgage limits for 2026 and FHFA’s 2026 conforming loan limits, both covering every county. We cross-checked the FHFA file against HUD’s own copy of the conforming limits and they matched in every county. When the agencies publish new limits, a script downloads both files again and every page is rebuilt from them. Last year FHFA posted its file on November 25 and HUD followed on December 11.

The rules in the calculator come from HUD Handbook 4000.1 (Update 18, issued August 12, 2026), HUD’s mortgage insurance premium chart, VA’s regulations at 38 CFR Part 36, the Fannie Mae Selling Guide and Freddie Mac’s published LTV table. Each page lists its sources with dates. Where we couldn’t read a primary source ourselves, we left the rule out instead of repeating someone else’s summary.

Not affiliated with any agency

Porchlight isn’t part of, or endorsed by, HUD, FHA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, FHFA, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The loan programs are theirs; the explanations and the calculator are ours.

Corrections

If a limit or a rule here is wrong, write to hello@multifamilyfor.sale with the page and what you believe is right, and a link if you have one. We check it against the agency’s document and fix it or reply with what we found.