Price does not set a reserve requirement. A $400,000 home and a $600,000 home are treated the same on that front. For a single-family home, condo, or duplex with an automated approval, FHA does not require cash reserves at all (a manually underwritten loan needs one month of payments). Reserves become a hard rule at 3-4 units, where FHA requires three months of the full housing payment. The wrinkle is FHA's automated underwriting. The TOTAL Scorecard behaves a bit like a black box: even where reserves are not a stated requirement, the system weighs your overall file, and reserves are part of that picture. We have seen the identical borrower and transaction come back denied with no documented reserves, then approve once a reasonable reserve amount, on the order of tens of thousands of dollars, was shown in the file (figure illustrative). The practical takeaway: even where FHA technically lets you put nearly every dollar you have toward closing, we steer clients away from arriving at the closing table with nothing left. A cushion helps the approval and protects you after you move in. We can figure out what you would actually need for a specific purchase on the free Roadmap conversation (about 20 minutes) where we run your real numbers.