Each year Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), set a maximum loan amount for conforming loans, along with other conditions. In general, these loan limits are $417,000, although they go as high as $625,500 in some high-cost parts of the continental United States and Puerto Rico, and higher still in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Mortgage loans that exceed these conforming loan amounts for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are called jumbo mortgages. The cost of obtaining a jumbo mortgage is generally higher than the cost of obtaining a conforming loan.