Conventional Loans in Naperville, IL: Three Percent Down at the City's Median Price, the Transfer Stamp the Buyer Pays and a DuPage or Will County Tax Bill

Redfin's count for Naperville put the median sale at $659,686 for the three months ending September 2026. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will insure a one-unit loan of up to $541,287 in DuPage County and in Will County this year. A conventional loan, which the government does not insure, reaches a home at that median with a small down payment, and an FHA loan does not.

A conventional loan covers a Naperville home at the city's median price with as little as 3 percent down, because the 2026 conforming limit of $832,750 applies on both the DuPage County and Will County sides of town. I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in Illinois through C2 Financial Corporation, NMLS #135622, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. The loan rules on this page come from Fannie Mae's Selling Guide and Eligibility Matrix and from Freddie Mac's Guide, and I read every local source on November 4, 2026. My Naperville page covers the city itself, from the Riverwalk to the utility bill, and the Chicago area page covers the region. This page stays on the loan.

The 2026 conforming limit in DuPage and Will County, and Naperville's median

The conforming limit is the largest loan Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy on a one-unit home in a county, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency's 2026 figure for DuPage County and for Will County is $832,750. The limit caps the loan, not the price of the home, so your down payment decides how far above it the price can go. A loan above the limit is a jumbo loan, and the conforming versus jumbo explainer shows where that line falls.

Redfin's median is a three-month figure for every kind of home in the city, from a Cress Creek townhouse to a new build south of 75th Street, so I use it only to show the arithmetic. The figures below are an illustration on that median, with the down payment rounded to the dollar.

Illustration: a $659,686 Naperville home	Down payment	Conventional loan	Against FHA's $541,287 limit	Highest price $832,750 covers at this down payment
3% down	$19,791	$639,895	$98,608 over it	about $858,500
5% down	$32,984	$626,702	$85,415 over it	about $876,600
10% down	$65,969	$593,717	$52,430 over it	about $925,300
20% down	$131,937	$527,749	$13,538 under it	about $1,040,900

In every row but the last, the loan is above FHA's limit, so FHA could not finance this price at that down payment, and a conventional loan can. That is why, at this price, the comparison on a Naperville file is between conventional down payments rather than between programs. If you are looking under the FHA limit, my FHA page for Illinois covers that loan.

Your loan is measured against the lower of the contract price and the appraised value, the way Fannie Mae's Selling Guide describes it. So if a home appraises under the price you agreed to, the down payment has to make up the difference, or the price has to come down.

Your minimum down payment on a conventional loan

On a one-unit home you will live in, Fannie Mae's Eligibility Matrix lets a fixed-rate loan be as much as 97 percent of the home's value, which is 3 percent down, and an adjustable-rate loan 95 percent. A two- to four-unit home you live in allows 95 percent. The 3 percent tier has conditions, and the Selling Guide lists them. The loan has to be fixed-rate, up to 30 years, on a one-unit home that everyone on the loan will live in. At least one person on the loan has to be a first-time home buyer, meaning someone who has not had an ownership interest in a property in the last three years. When everyone on the loan is a first-time home buyer, Fannie Mae also asks one of you to take a homeownership education course before closing. The loan has to be run through Desktop Underwriter, Fannie Mae's automated system, rather than underwritten by hand.

HomeReady is Fannie Mae's low-down-payment loan for clients under its income limits. It is a second way to 3 percent down, with those limits instead of the first-time rule, and who qualifies for 3 percent down on a conventional loan walks through both. Fannie Mae does not allow the 3 percent tier on a high-balance loan, which is a loan above the regular conforming limit in a county that has a higher one. DuPage and Will County have only the regular limit, so that restriction does not come up here.

Mortgage insurance below 20 percent down

Freddie Mac's Guide requires mortgage insurance on a conventional loan that is more than 80 percent of the home's value, and Fannie Mae applies the same line. In the table above, that is every row but the last. Mortgage insurance is a policy you pay for that protects the lender if the loan is not repaid. On a conventional loan it is built to end: the lender gives you the federal Homeowners Protection Act disclosures when the loan is made, and those describe how and when you can cancel it. My article on when mortgage insurance goes away explains how that differs from FHA, where the insurance usually runs for the life of the loan.

The premium is collected with your monthly payment. Fannie Mae's escrow rules make escrow deposits for a client-paid mortgage insurance premium mandatory, and a lender cannot waive them even when it agrees to waive escrow for taxes and insurance. So on a 5 or 10 percent down Naperville purchase, the insurance line is part of the payment I run from the start.

The city transfer stamp, and your cash to close

Naperville sells its real estate transfer stamp to the buyer. The City's transfer stamp page says it plainly: "Under city ordinance, buyers of residential or commercial properties in incorporated Naperville must purchase a real estate transfer tax stamp." The rate is $1.50 per $500 of the purchase price, rounded up to the next $500. The same page says the stamp applies only to property inside the city limits, and it points you to the city's Your Place application to check an address. Other towns, such as Glen Ellyn and Elk Grove Village, put their stamp on the seller, and buying a home in an Illinois village goes through the differences town by town. Who pays the state and county stamps is set by the contract and local practice rather than by a statewide rule, as the Illinois page explains, so your attorney confirms it for your contract.

Illustration: the city stamp on a $659,686 purchase
Purchase price, rounded up to the next $500	$660,000
$660,000 divided by 500, times $1.50	$1,980

The stamp has paperwork of its own. The City wants a Statement of Open Accounts, a letter showing nothing is owed to the city on the property, requested no later than seven business days before closing. It also wants the signed contract and a copy of the deed, and it asks for up to seven business days to process the application. Ask your closing attorney to put the request in early. Put the stamp in your cash-to-close estimate from the first conversation, because in a town that puts its stamp on the seller that line would not be on your side of the statement.

The stamp also changes what a seller credit can do for you. Fannie Mae calls a seller, a builder or a real estate agent an interested party, and its Selling Guide caps what they can pay toward your closing costs and prepaid items. The cap is a share of the price or the appraised value, whichever is lower. It is 3 percent when your loan is more than 90 percent of the home's value, 6 percent when the loan is between 75.01 and 90 percent, and 9 percent at 75 percent or less. The Guide leaves out of that cap the fees a seller pays by local custom. In Naperville the stamp is yours by ordinance, so a seller who agrees to cover it is paying one of your closing costs, and I count it inside the cap. On the median, with 5 percent down, the cap is about $19,791, which leaves plenty of room for the stamp, the attorney's fee and the prepaid taxes and insurance. Anything a seller pays over the cap, or over your actual closing costs, comes off the price before the loan is figured, and none of it can go toward your down payment.

One credit does not count against that cap at all. DuPage County's bill for 2025 taxes was paid in 2026, so the taxes for the months the seller owned the home get settled at closing. The Selling Guide treats a legitimate prorated real estate tax credit, in a place where taxes are paid in arrears like this, as something other than a seller contribution.

Two counties, one escrow account

The northern part of Naperville is in DuPage County and the southern part is in Will County, and that decides which county sends the tax bill. Inside each county, Washington Street is the main township line, and the township assessor values the home. The DuPage County Treasurer set 2026 installments due June 1 and September 1, and the Will County Treasurer's calendar has the same two dates.

Your lender does not pay those bills twice a year out of your pocket. Fannie Mae's escrow rules have the first mortgage generally provide for an escrow account, for taxes and insurance. A monthly share of those bills is collected with each payment, and the lender pays the county when the installment comes due. A lender may waive that account unless a law requires it. Illinois also has its own rule for ending one later. Closing your escrow account in Illinois at 65 percent covers the notice your lender has to send once on-time payments bring the loan down to 65 percent of the original amount.

The monthly payment a lender qualifies you on is the whole thing. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide adds principal and interest, property taxes, homeowners insurance, flood insurance if the address needs it, mortgage insurance, any special assessment and any association dues into one housing expense. On a Naperville purchase I run that payment with the actual county bill for the parcel. A seller's bill with a senior exemption on it, or a bill on a home that was assessed before an addition, will not be yours.

Townhomes, rowhomes and condos on a conventional loan

City Council approved Everly Trace in October 2025, 68 homes at 111th Street and Cedar Drive, three-story rowhomes and two-story townhomes by M/I Homes, on a 10-acre site being annexed into the city, as NCTV17 reported. Cress Creek, on the northwest side, has townhouses as well as single-family homes. A townhome can be set up legally as a lot you own outright, with the home on it, or as a condominium unit. The recorded declaration, the document filed with the county that says how the community is owned, decides which one you are buying.

On a condominium unit the lender looks at the whole project as well as at you. Freddie Mac's Guide requires the lender to confirm that the unit, the loan and the project meet one of its project review options, and that the project is not an ineligible one. Fannie Mae's matrix can also call for a bigger down payment on a condo, depending on the review. The association's budget, insurance and resale package are the documents that answer those questions. Illinois adds the Section 22.1 disclosure, which a resale seller of a condo has to get from the association and make available to you on request. It covers the declaration and other governing documents, the unit's account with any unpaid assessments, the reserves, and the capital spending the association expects in the current and next two fiscal years. The association has 10 business days to produce it. My article on why condos are harder to finance explains what gets checked. I have not confirmed how Everly Trace or any other Naperville community is set up, so please ask the listing agent for the declaration before you write the offer.

Your checklist before you make an offer

• The county parcel record, which shows whether the home is in DuPage or Will County, which township assesses it and whether the address is inside the city limits for the stamp.
• The seller's current tax bill and any exemptions on it, so the payment I run uses the bill you will get rather than the one they got.
• For a condo, townhome or rowhome, the recorded declaration, and the association's budget, insurance certificate and 22.1 disclosure.
• A homeowners insurance quote early, and a flood zone check on FEMA's map for any address near the West Branch of the DuPage River or Spring Brook.
• The attorney review period in your Illinois purchase contract, which is when your attorney can raise the stamp and the open-accounts request.
• For your pre-approval, please provide your most recent pay stubs covering 30 days, your W-2s for the past two years, and all pages of your last two months of bank statements, even if the last page is intentionally left blank. Pre-approval in Illinois lists the rest.

Once you have an address in mind, I can run the conventional payment with that parcel's county bill, the insurance, the mortgage insurance and any association dues in it. I can also run the cash to close with the city stamp on your side of the statement. You'll see pricing for your scenario, choose a rate option, which you can change later, and the application opens from there. You are also welcome to call me and talk it through first.

Nothing on this page is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and it is not tax advice. The lender's underwriting decides what a client is approved for, the appraisal sets the value, the City of Naperville decides whether an address needs its stamp, and the township assessor and county set the tax bill. Please confirm each before you rely on a figure here.

Common questions

What is the conforming loan limit in Naperville, IL for 2026?

It is the same one-unit figure in DuPage County and in Will County, so the county line through the city does not change it, and the box below this article shows the current number. A loan above it is a jumbo loan, and at Naperville's median sale price a conventional loan with 3 percent down is well under it.

How much do I need to put down for a conventional loan in Naperville?

As little as 3 percent on a one-unit home you will live in, when someone on the loan is a first-time home buyer or the loan is a HomeReady loan, and 5 percent otherwise. Putting 20 percent down avoids mortgage insurance, and at the city's median that 20 percent loan is the only one of the four in the table above that would also fit under FHA's limit.

Who pays the transfer tax in Naperville, IL?

You do, as the buyer, for the City of Naperville's stamp, under the city's own ordinance. The rate is one dollar and fifty cents for every five hundred dollars of the purchase price, rounded up to the next five hundred. Who pays the state and county stamps is set by your contract and local practice, so your attorney confirms it. The City also wants a Statement of Open Accounts requested at least seven business days before closing.

Can the seller pay my closing costs on a conventional loan in Naperville?

Yes, up to a share of the price or appraised value that depends on your down payment. The cap is 3 percent when your loan is more than 90 percent of the value, 6 percent from 75.01 to 90 percent, and 9 percent at 75 percent or less. Because Naperville's ordinance puts the transfer stamp on the buyer, a seller credit that covers it counts inside that cap, and nothing a seller pays can go toward your down payment.

Does a conventional loan on a Naperville home require mortgage insurance?

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae require it when the loan is more than 80 percent of the home's value, which is any down payment under 20 percent. A conventional loan is built so the insurance can be canceled, and the lender gives you the Homeowners Protection Act disclosures that explain how when the loan is made.

Is my Naperville property tax paid through my mortgage?

Usually, yes. A conventional loan generally comes with an escrow account, where a monthly share of the year's property tax and insurance is collected with each payment and the lender pays the DuPage County or Will County installment when it comes due. A lender may waive the account unless a law requires it. Illinois law also requires the lender to tell you when on-time payments bring the loan down to 65 percent of the original amount, and you can end the account then if you choose.

Can I use a conventional loan to buy a townhome or condo in Naperville?

Yes. A townhome on its own lot is financed like a detached home. A condominium unit also has to pass the lender's project review, which covers the project's budget, insurance and completion, and a lender may ask for a bigger down payment on a condo unit. The recorded declaration says which one you are buying, and the association's 22.1 disclosure shows the unit's assessment account and the association's finances.