Two tests decide whether a USDA loan is on the table, and they are independent of each other. One is the address. The other is what the household earns. Montgomery County does unusually well on both, and most buyers here have never been told either fact.
The income limits that apply here
Montgomery County sits in the Philadelphia metro, so it takes the metro figures instead of the national standard that covers most of Pennsylvania:
| Household | Montgomery County | National standard |
|---|---|---|
| 1-4 people | $141,100 | $122,800 |
| 5-8 people | $186,300 | $162,100 |
Effective 13 July 2026, under USDA procedure notice PN 657, which fully revised the income appendix. Verified on 26 August 2026 by driving USDA’s own income eligibility tool for Pennsylvania and Montgomery County. It is a cliff and not a slope: $141,096 passes and $141,108 fails, by eight dollars.
Older numbers are still in circulation because an out-of-date USDA file link keeps serving the FY2025 table. If you find $137,300 anywhere, that is the superseded figure. Check the effective date before you use anything you read.
Clearing the income test is one thing and getting the loan is another; the mortgage itself is subject to lender approval. USDA also runs a direct lending program with far lower ceilings — very low income $61,350 for a one to four person household and $81,000 for five to eight, low income $98,150 and $129,600 — and that one is taken up with USDA itself.
Where the eligible ground is
USDA draws its ineligible areas from census geography, so the boundaries cut across municipal lines and a borough center can be inside eligible territory while somewhere larger a few miles off is not. Two of USDA’s own map layers were queried directly on 26 August 2026, in place of a lender’s copy of the map.
Eligible across the whole municipality: Upper Hanover Township, Pennsburg, East Greenville, Red Hill, Green Lane, Marlborough Township, Upper Frederick, Lower Frederick, Salford, Upper Salford including Sumneytown, Lower Salford, Perkiomen Township including Perkiomenville, Schwenksville, Skippack, New Hanover including Gilbertsville, Douglass, Limerick, Trappe, Collegeville, Franconia, Souderton, Telford and Royersford.
The whole Upper Perkiomen Valley is in, borough centers included. That is the cleanest way to hold it in your head.
Split, so the specific address decides: Upper Providence and Worcester are eligible over nearly all their area, with the Philadelphia urbanized edge clipping their southern corners. Lower Pottsgrove runs about 81% eligible and Upper Pottsgrove about three quarters, with the Pottstown urbanized area taking the rest. Towamencin, Lower Providence and Hatfield Township keep smaller eligible fringes.
Not eligible: Pottstown Borough, West Pottsgrove, Lansdale, North Wales, Hatfield Borough, Montgomery Township, Upper Gwynedd, Lower Gwynedd, Whitpain, Horsham and Norristown.
The shape is two blobs. The Philadelphia urbanized area pushes north through Lansdale and Montgomery Township and runs out of steam around Skippack; the Pottstown urbanized area takes out the borough and the ground immediately around it. North and west of those two, the county is eligible. USDA’s own disclaimer travels with all of it: the final determination is made by Rural Development when a complete application arrives, and looking at the map is not that determination.
Two things that get confused with Montgomery County: Bally, Barto and Douglassville are Berks County addresses. Douglass Township in Montgomery County is a different place, and it is eligible.
The fees, and the calendar
USDA’s FY2026 fees are 1.00% upfront and 0.35% annually, read 26 August 2026. Applications run on the federal year, 1 October to 30 September, and the turn of the year in early October has historically brought a short gap in commitment authority. If a closing is sitting near the start of October, that is worth raising with the lender before it becomes a scheduling problem.
Everything else in this county still applies
The upper end of Montgomery County is not cheap to own by default. Pennsburg totals 44.77 mills and Upper Hanover 36.50, both in Upper Perkiomen School District at 29.0962 school mills. Skippack, Collegeville, Trappe, Schwenksville, Perkiomen and Lower Frederick all sit in Perkiomen Valley School District, the one district in the county levying 0.90% school earned income tax, which puts every one of those municipalities at 1.40% or more in local income tax no matter what the township charges. Douglass, New Hanover and Upper Frederick send their earned income tax to the Berks bureau instead of Berkheimer, which collects for the other 59 municipalities.
Realty transfer tax is 2.000% up there like everywhere else in the county, and the assessment sits on the 1996 base with a Common Level Ratio factor of 3.36 for documents dated 1 July 2026 through 30 June 2027.
What to do next
Get the address checked before anything else, because the map answers first and the arithmetic second. Call the line, or send it along through the form, and a licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender calls you back once that address has been run. If it comes back ineligible by a hundred yards, ask what else the same price reaches.