Five years ago this week, 98 people perished when the Champlain Towers condominium complex in Surfside, Florida, collapsed. Flawed design and faulty construction were to blame for the collapse, which actually took weeks and not minutes, according to a newly issued report.
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Since the Surfside tragedy, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have updated condominium approval standards. With an eye on building safety and structural integrity, the top priorities for the agencies became addressing deferred maintenance, critical repairs, ample insurance coverage and stricter budget reserve requirements.
Also see: Surfside tower collapse reverberates through Southern California’s HOAs
“The cost of ownership goes beyond their mortgage and their monthly HOA assessments,” said Dawn Bauman, chief executive of the Community Associates Institute. “The cost of responsible ownership includes maintenance, preventive maintenance including saving for future repair and replacement components.”
If HOAs failed to meet or maintain the standards, Fannie Mae would add associations to its “blacklist,” a list of condo communities unavailable for mortgage backing, preventing borrowers from obtaining cheaper conventional financing.
A Freddie Mac spokesman previously told me Freddie doesn’t keep a blacklist or any list for that matter, but it’s been verified and widely reported by the Southern California News Group and other media outlets.
Map: See the 700 condo communities in California on Fannie Mae’s blacklist (March 2025)
The alternatives for buyers are either no financing (cash-only sales) or the so-called non-warrantable condo financing, which typically requires at least a 10% down payment and carries, at a minimum, a 1% higher interest rate.
Fewer buyers can qualify, much less afford non-warrantable financing. The stigma of fewer financing options makes even cash buyers pause. Fewer financing options will hurt condo property values as there is less buyer competition in play.
There are roughly 150,000 condo associations across America. California has 30,000 HOAs, according to Bauman.
Just how many condos are blacklisted? Nobody knows because Fannie Mae keeps it a secret from the public. Now, even lenders have been blocked from accessing the list whereas previously they could. It doesn’t make any sense, especially since HUD allows consumer access to FHA approved (or not) projects. And the VA allows public access as well.
Fannie Mae did not respond to my query about the size of its condo blacklist.
Lenders and HOA board members can access Fannie Mae’s “Condo Status Finder” to learn the status of their individual association. Most condo projects are somewhere in the middle and have no status (approved or unavailable). For those, you must also go through a vetting process.
The shame of it is that many first-time buyers will plunk down $500 for an inspection, $650 for an appraisal and another $500 for the HOA questionnaire and documents (that’s $1,650) only to find out, in many cases, that the condo complex was deemed ineligible for conventional financing.
Before your agent writes an offer for you, check with your lender to see if the HOA is approved or blacklisted or neither. This doesn’t guarantee you are not throwing good money after bad. But it at least reduces the chances.
More rounds of tougher standards are coming in August and January 2027.
For loan applications dated Aug. 3 or later, borrowers will no longer be eligible for a limited or streamlined condo project review. This means a lot more cost to acquire the documents, a lot more questions and a lot more scrutiny — even on communities that are Fannie Mae-approved.
A limited review only requires proof of standard insurance and fidelity insurance, according to one of my industry sources. And nothing else.
A full review requires information that needs to be verified through specific documents, according to Natalie Stewart, president of FHA Review. Here’s a look at those documents in which information would be vetted:
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—Project questionnaire
—Current budget including the cash reserve line
—Insurance
—Financial statements including year-end, current interim and delinquency accounts receivable report
—Reserve study and/or any inspection/engineering reports from the last 3 years
—Special assessment details (current, pending, anticipated)
—Recorded legal documents (CC&Rs/Declaration, bylaws, articles, amendments)
—Recent meeting minutes
—Litigation disclosure
To be clear, providing all this information doesn’t mean the project is approved. The information in these documents must be scrutinized.
For example, let’s say the condo association has 5% of the budget in reserves. But Fannie Mae currently requires 10% reserves. That condo project is likely to land on the blacklist, even if its currently on the approved list.
Another big change is coming for HOAs on Jan. 4, 2027.
The HOA minimum reserve funding requirement goes 15% from 10% of the community’s annual budget.
Independent industry data — including analysis of 100,000-plus reserve studies — consistently shows that 62-74% of associations are underfunded below the industry standard threshold, according to the National Association of Mortgage Brokers.
That means somewhere around 70% of associations do not have the 10% in reserves. How many more will be out of Fannie Mae compliance when January comes around, and the reserve mandate rises?
“It’s going to hurt a lot of first-time buyers,” said Kimber White, president of NAMB. “At a time when the focus is on affordability, this option (conventional financing) is off the table (for many) or there are non-(conventional)QM products with higher rates and fees.”
Come Aug. 3, the full review is going to be a gut buster. No doubt there will be a lot of declined mortgage applications because the HOA can’t provide items on the full review list. There will be more denials because the lender will discover some deficiencies in the thick list of documents provided.
Come Jan. 4, a bunch more HOAs will be out of Fannie Mae compliance because budgets are generally planned a year in advance. Many planned for a 10% reserve, not to mention the 70% or so of HOAs that currently don’t have enough reserves.
No stakeholder wants to see another Champlain Towers catastrophe. But have we gone overboard on the HOA standards that we make things even tougher for first-time buyers to get on the road to homeownership?
Freddie Mac rate news
The 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.49%, 2 basis points higher than last week. The 15-year fixed rate averaged 5.84%, 3 basis points higher than last week.
The Mortgage Bankers Association reported a 1% application increase compared with one week ago.
Bottom line: Assuming a borrower gets an average 30-year fixed rate on a conforming $832,750 loan, last year’s payment was $154 more than this week’s payment of $5,258.
What I see: Locally, well-qualified borrowers can get the following fixed-rate mortgages with one point: A 30-year FHA at 5.625 %, a 15-year conventional at 5.5%, a 30-year conventional at 6.125%, a 15-year conventional high balance at 5.75% ($832,751 to $1,249,125 in LA and OC and $832,751 to $1,104,000 in San Diego), a 30-year high balance conventional at 6.25% and a jumbo 30-year-fixed at 5.99%.
Eye-catcher loan program of the week: A 30-year mortgage, 30% down, 5.375% for the first five years payments, and 1 point cost.
Jeff Lazerson, president of Mortgage Grader, can be reached at 949-322-8640 or [email protected].
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