Duplex and 2-4 Unit Loans in Broomfield County, CO

How 2-4 Unit Property Financing in Colorado Actually Works

2-4 unit property financing in Colorado is residential mortgage financing for a building with two, three, or four separate dwelling units sitting on a single deed. A duplex, a triplex, and a fourplex all live inside that definition, and all three are treated as residential rather than commercial property. Add a fifth unit and the whole conversation moves to commercial terms.

That distinction matters more than people expect. It means a fourplex uses residential underwriting, a residential appraisal, and the residential loan limits published every year. It does not mean the file looks like a single family purchase, because there are real differences in how rent is treated, how the property is valued, and how much cash you bring.

I get this call fairly often at my office at 8181 Arista Pl. Someone has been watching a duplex in Original Broomfield or an older four-unit building off Sheridan, and they want to know whether the numbers work. The first thing I ask is not about price. It is whether they plan to live there.

Owner-Occupied or Investment: The Fork in 2-4 Unit Financing

Everything downstream hangs on this fork, so it is worth slowing down on it.

Owner-occupied means you will live in one of the units as your primary residence. You still collect rent on the others. What you gain is access to the low down payment programs that exist because the government and the agencies want people housed, not because they want investors funded. In practice that means FHA and VA financing are on the table, and the conventional low down payment options are too. The tradeoff is a genuine occupancy commitment, generally documented at closing and expected to be honored.

Pure investment means nobody in your household will live there. The programs designed around occupancy fall away, the required down payment rises, and lenders typically want cash reserves left over after closing, measured in months of payments. In exchange you are free of the occupancy commitment and you can hold as many of these as your file supports.

I am deliberately not printing a down payment percentage here for either path. Agency guidelines for multi-unit properties get revised, they differ by unit count and by occupancy, and a number that was accurate last quarter can quietly stop being accurate. What I will tell you is that the gap between the two paths is large enough to change which building you can afford. So I price both structures on your actual file, subject to a full loan estimate, before you write an offer.

One more note on the owner-occupied path. Buying a small multi-unit building, living in one unit, and renting the rest is a strategy people call house hacking, and it is the most common way a first-time buyer in Broomfield County ends up owning rental units. It deserves its own walkthrough, and I am writing one.

2026 Conforming Loan Limits for 2-4 Unit Properties in Colorado

Here is where multi-unit financing quietly gets generous. Conforming loan limits rise with unit count, so a fourplex supports a substantially larger loan than a single family home in the same county. These are the 2026 figures from the Federal Housing Finance Agency county loan limit file.

Source: the FHFA 2026 county loan limit list. Westminster, Thornton, and Arvada addresses sit in the Denver metro column alongside Broomfield.

Notice the second column. Superior and Louisville are in Boulder County, which is its own metro area for loan limit purposes, and its limits run higher than the Denver metro figures at every unit count. That is a $17,250 difference at one unit and a $33,150 difference at four. It is small enough that people assume the whole north metro shares one number, and it is exactly the kind of assumption that sends a Superior fourplex file into jumbo territory when it did not need to go there.

Where FHA and VA Fit in 2-4 Unit Property Financing

Both FHA and VA financing can be used on two, three, and four unit properties, and both require that you occupy one of the units. That occupancy requirement is not a formality. It is the reason these programs allow the down payments they do.

FHA financing is the most common route for a first purchase of a small multi-unit building, because the down payment requirement is low and the underwriting is built for buyers without deep reserves. There is one FHA rule in this category that surprises more Broomfield County buyers than any other, and it does not switch on until you reach three units.

FHA's Self-Sufficiency Test on Three and Four Unit Properties

HUD Handbook 4000.1, at section II.A.1.b.iv(B)(3)(c), sets the standard plainly: the PITI divided by the monthly Net Self-Sufficiency Rental Income "may not exceed 100 percent for three- to four-unit Properties." PITI is your principal, interest, taxes, and insurance payment. In everyday terms, the building has to carry itself on paper. The rent the property is expected to produce, after a required deduction, has to cover that payment.

Two details decide whether a particular building clears it.

First, the rent side of the math uses the appraiser's estimate of fair market rent from all units, including the unit you choose to occupy. Your own unit's market rent counts toward the test even though you will never collect it from yourself. That works in your favor, and it is the opposite of what most people assume.

Second, the deduction. The handbook calculates the income by "subtracting the greater of the Appraiser's estimate for vacancies and maintenance, or 25 percent of the fair market rent." You will see this repeated online as the 75 percent rule, and that shorthand is not quite right. Because the handbook takes the greater of the two figures, at most 75 percent of fair market rent counts toward the test. If the appraiser's vacancy and maintenance estimate lands above 25 percent, then less than 75 percent counts. So treat 75 percent as a ceiling, not as a number to build your offer around.

This is the rule that quietly sorts which triplexes and fourplexes in the north metro are workable with FHA financing, and it turns on an appraisal you have not ordered yet at the moment you write your offer. That is exactly why I would rather look at a candidate property with you beforehand. Eligibility here is subject to the current handbook, the completed appraisal, and credit approval.

A Duplex Counts Differently, and a Duplex Plus an ADU Counts Differently Again

A two-unit property is not subject to the self-sufficiency test. HUD's two-unit section carries only the appraisal form requirement and no coverage standard at all, so a duplex you occupy does not have to pencil out on paper the way a triplex does. For some buyers that distinction alone is the reason a duplex is the right first purchase.

Now the part almost nobody mentions, and it matters more in Colorado than most places. The same handbook defines a three- to four-unit property as either a property with three or four individual dwelling units, or a property with "two individual Dwelling Units and one ADU or three individual Dwelling Units and one ADU." An ADU is an accessory dwelling unit, the smaller secondary living space people often call a mother-in-law unit or a carriage house. The handbook then adds that while a one-unit home with a single ADU stays a one-unit property, "for any Single Family residential Property with two or more units, a separate additional Dwelling Unit must be considered as an additional unit."

Read those two passages together and the result is concrete: a duplex with an ADU is a three-unit property in FHA's eyes, which means it is subject to the self-sufficiency test that the very same duplex without the ADU would have skipped.

Colorado makes this live rather than theoretical. HB24-1152 required Broomfield, Westminster, Thornton, Arvada, Superior, and Louisville to allow an accessory dwelling unit on lots where single-unit detached homes are already permitted, so more of these properties are being created every year. Adding an ADU to a duplex can move that property into a stricter FHA category, and it can also move the applicable FHA loan limit, since limits are set by unit count. It is worth a conversation before you build one, and before you write an offer on a duplex that already has one.

VA financing is the quietest advantage in this whole category for eligible veterans and service members, and it also requires you to occupy one unit. Given how many service members and veterans live along the US-36 corridor, this comes up more here than people expect.

On the conventional side, the low down payment path runs through the same programs that serve single family buyers, and my 5% down home loans guide covers how that structure behaves. For the investment path, my 20% down home loans guide is the closer comparison, because larger down payments are the norm once occupancy comes off the table. Eligibility for any of these is subject to credit approval and current program guidelines.

Why a DSCR Loan Cannot Finance a Broomfield County Duplex You Live In

This is the single most common misunderstanding I correct on multi-unit calls, and it is worth being precise about.

A DSCR loan, short for debt service coverage ratio, qualifies on the property's rental income rather than on your personal income. Instead of documenting your pay stubs and your personal debt load, the lender compares the rent the property produces against the payment the property carries. My Broomfield County DSCR loan guide walks through how the ratio is calculated and what the requirements look like.

Here is the boundary. A DSCR loan is a non-owner-occupied product only. It is business-purpose financing, and it cannot be used on a property the borrower lives in. That includes a duplex where you occupy one unit and rent the other, and it includes a fourplex where you take the smallest unit. Occupying any unit in the building takes the file out of the DSCR lane entirely.

So if you are picturing yourself living in one side and qualifying on the rent from the other side, that is not a DSCR file. That is an owner-occupied file, and it runs through the FHA, VA, and conventional paths above. The good news is that the owner-occupied path usually asks for far less money down anyway.

What I will not do is help anyone describe a property as non-owner-occupied when they intend to live there. Occupancy is a representation you make to a lender, and misstating it is not a paperwork shortcut. It is the kind of thing that follows a file around for years. If your plan is to live in the building, I structure it as what it is.

What Underwriting Looks at on a Broomfield County Duplex or Fourplex

Beyond occupancy, a handful of things behave differently on a multi-unit file than on a single family purchase. None of them are obstacles. They are just items to plan around.

1. The appraisal takes a different shape. A multi-unit appraisal typically includes a rent schedule alongside the value opinion, and comparable sales may come from a wider radius because Broomfield County built out mostly as single family and townhome product. Why it matters: build a little extra room into your appraisal window when you negotiate the contract.
2. Rental income is counted, but usually with a haircut. Programs commonly allow a portion of documented or appraiser-supported rent on the units you will not occupy, reduced for vacancy and maintenance. Why it matters: the rent you collect and the rent that helps you qualify are two different numbers, and I would rather you hear that from me than from an underwriting condition.
3. Reserves come up more often. Multi-unit files, especially investment files, frequently ask you to keep months of payments in reserve after closing. Why it matters: your cash to close is not the whole cash requirement, so I plan for both.
4. Insurance is a landlord policy, not a homeowners policy. Coverage for a rented unit is written differently. Why it matters: the premium enters your payment and your qualifying math, so get a real quote early from a licensed agent rather than estimating.
5. Condition matters more. Older multi-unit buildings in the north metro can carry deferred maintenance that an appraiser will call out. Why it matters: repair conditions can move a closing date, so a thorough inspection is money well spent.

If your plan is a straight investment purchase with no occupancy at all, the conventional investment route and the DSCR route are the two main lanes, and they suit different borrowers. I am writing a full comparison of investment property loans for Broomfield County to sit alongside this page.

Steps to Line Up 2-4 Unit Property Financing in Broomfield County

The order matters here more than it does on a single family purchase, because the occupancy decision drives everything else.

1. Decide occupancy honestly, first. Will you live in one unit for the foreseeable future, or not. Everything else follows from this answer, so do not leave it fuzzy.
2. Get the unit count right. Two, three, and four units are treated differently by program and by loan limit. A legal fourplex and a triplex with a converted basement are not the same file.
3. Confirm the county. Broomfield, Westminster, Thornton, and Arvada use the Denver metro limits. Superior and Louisville use the Boulder County limits, which are higher.
4. Get pre-approved for the structure you actually intend. Your pre-approval should reflect the real occupancy plan and the real down payment, so your offer holds up when it is accepted.
5. Line up rent documentation early. Existing leases, rent rolls, and the seller's records help. Bring them to me before underwriting asks.
6. Plan a slightly longer timeline. Appraisal and condition review on multi-unit property can run longer than on a single family home, and building that into the contract is easier than renegotiating later.

2-4 Unit Property Financing in Colorado: Quick Facts

One closing thought. The buyers who do well with 2-4 unit property financing in Colorado are the ones who settled the occupancy question before they toured anything, because that answer sets the budget rather than the other way around. Sort that out with me first, and the rest of the plan builds itself. For the full financing picture, my Broomfield County home loans hub is the next stop.