There is no lifetime limit on FHA loans; the real limit is that FHA generally insures only one loan at a time, on a home you live in. Each FHA purchase has to be a place you intend to occupy as your primary residence. Confirm the current FHA rules, since program details shift. What that means in practice: Moving from a conventional loan to a new FHA loan is fine. The thing to watch is FHA's 100-mile rule on rental income: unless you are relocating more than 100 miles away, FHA will not count rent from the home you are leaving, no matter how that old home is financed, so you would need to qualify carrying both full payments. Even beyond 100 miles, a borrower with no landlord history needs a market-rent appraisal plus documented 25% equity in the departing home. Conventional treats departing-residence rent more generously, counting 75% of market rent on a new lease (and your actual tax-return rental figures once you have history). Carrying two FHA loans at once is the restricted case. The exceptions: relocating more than 100 miles for work, a documented increase in family size where the current home no longer fits and its loan balance is 75% or less of the home's value, vacating a jointly owned property, or being only a non-occupying co-borrower on the other FHA loan. Paying off an FHA loan just to free up another is rarely the sharpest use of cash. The same money could go toward a larger down payment on the next home, and once it is buried in home equity you need a lender's approval to get it back out. We lean toward keeping cash liquid. The clean path is simple: once you sell or refinance out of your current FHA loan, you can use FHA again with no restriction.