Jumbo Loans in Florida
Financing for homes above the $832,750 conforming limit — priced personally across 200+ wholesale lenders by Jacksonville Mortgage Broker Douglas Wilkerson.
What is a jumbo loan?
A jumbo loan is a mortgage that is larger than the conforming loan limit — the maximum size of a loan that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy. In 2026 that limit is $832,750 for a single-family home in most of the country, including Florida. A loan above that amount cannot be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, so it is funded and held differently — usually by a bank, a credit union, or a wholesale lender that keeps jumbo loans on its own books or sells them to private investors. That different funding is why jumbo loans have their own rules, their own pricing, and their own paperwork.
The word jumbo describes the size of the loan, not the size of the house — although in practice the two go together. A jumbo loan can finance a luxury home, a larger family home in a high-cost neighborhood, or a purchase where the buyer simply borrows more than the conforming limit allows. It is still a mortgage like any other: the borrower makes monthly payments of principal and interest, the home secures the loan, and the same consumer protections apply. What changes is the underwriting: because the lender carries more risk on a larger loan, it looks harder at credit, income, assets, and reserves before it says yes.
Who jumbo loans are for
Jumbo loans are most often used by buyers in Northeast Florida's higher-priced neighborhoods, where even a well-priced home can push the loan amount past the conforming limit. In Ponte Vedra Beach and Jacksonville Beach, waterfront homes, larger coastal properties, and new construction in golf and beach communities routinely price above the range a conforming loan can cover. A jumbo loan lets those buyers finance the home they want with a single mortgage, rather than splitting the purchase across two loans or tying up cash that could stay invested or reserved.
Jumbo loans also fit move-up buyers who are trading a starter home for a larger family home, and buyers purchasing a second home near the coast. A family outgrowing its first house in Jacksonville may find that the next home — with more bedrooms, a larger lot, or a location closer to the beach — requires borrowing above the conforming limit. The same is true for a buyer adding a beach condo or a second home in Ponte Vedra Beach. In each case the borrower is the same kind of buyer a conventional loan serves; only the loan size is larger, and with it the documentation and reserves the lender will ask to see.
Down payments, credit, and reserves
Jumbo loans ask for more from the borrower than a conforming loan does, and that starts with the down payment. Because the lender is funding a larger loan that it cannot sell to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, it wants the borrower to have more of their own money in the purchase. A larger down payment lowers the loan amount relative to the home's value, which lowers the lender's risk — and it signals that the borrower has real skin in the game. The exact amount depends on the lender, the property, and the borrower's overall profile, and it is one of the first things Douglas will map out when he prices a jumbo scenario across his wholesale lenders.
Credit and reserves get the same close look. Jumbo lenders want to see a strong credit history and steady, documentable income, and they want to see reserves — money left over after closing that shows the borrower can keep paying even if income is interrupted. Self-employed borrowers, whose income is often documented differently than a salaried borrower's, should expect the lender to look closely at tax returns and business records. None of this is meant to scare a qualified buyer off; it is the lender protecting a larger loan, and a broker who knows which wholesale lender treats a given profile most favorably can make the difference between an approval and a denial.
How jumbo pricing works — and why a broker wins
Jumbo pricing works differently from conforming pricing because the loan cannot be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Each bank, credit union, or wholesale lender that funds jumbo loans sets its own price based on its own appetite for larger loans, its own cost of funds, and the risk it sees in the borrower's file. That means the same borrower, with the same home and the same credit, can be quoted meaningfully different rates and fees by different jumbo lenders — and the lender with the best price this month may not be the one with the best price next month.
That variation is exactly why a broker wins on jumbo loans. Instead of taking one bank's price as the final word, Douglas prices each jumbo scenario across 200+ wholesale lenders and lets them compete for the file. A lender overlay — an extra rule a single lender adds on top of the base guidelines — never ends the conversation, because another wholesale lender on the panel may not apply it. The borrower gets a personally priced answer, not an automated quote, and the pricing reflects the whole market rather than one institution's appetite that week.
Jumbo loans in Northeast Florida
Northeast Florida is a jumbo-loan market in a way much of Florida is not. In Ponte Vedra Beach and Jacksonville Beach, waterfront homes, larger coastal properties, and new construction in golf and beach communities routinely price above the range a conforming loan can cover — so buyers who need to borrow more than $832,750 are not the exception here, they are a regular part of the market. Douglas's office sits in Jacksonville Beach, so these are the neighborhoods he prices every week, with the appraisers, agents, and closing teams who know them.
That local footing matters on a jumbo file, because the appraisal, the property type, and the borrower's full profile all get a harder look than on a conforming loan. A condo on the beach, a second home in Ponte Vedra Beach, or a new-construction home still being built each raises questions a single bank's overlay might answer with a no — and with 200+ wholesale lenders to price across, Douglas can usually find the lender whose answer is yes. To talk through a jumbo purchase or refinance in Northeast Florida, call Douglas Wilkerson directly at (904) 517-4049.
