Condo Loan Approval: FHA vs VA vs Conventional Compared

Condo loan approval is not one status. The same building gets judged three separate times — once against conventional warrantability, once by FHA, and once by VA — and it can pass one review while failing another. This page puts the three regimes side by side so you can see which loan types actually work in a specific building, and what each one demands from the HOA.

We are not a lender. Every figure below should be confirmed with your loan officer against the current version of the rulebook.

Why condo approval is per-loan-type, not a single status

A condo project does not have an approval status. It has three of them, and they are decided by different organizations reading different documents against different thresholds.

Conventional financing turns on warrantability — whether a lender can sell the loan to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac under their project standards. FHA runs a formal project approval program with an application, a case number, and an expiration date. VA maintains its own list, built mostly on a legal review of the association’s governing documents.

Nothing links them. An FHA-approved building can be non-warrantable. A warrantable building can be invisible to VA because no lender ever submitted it. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in condo buying, and it usually surfaces when a buyer is already under contract.

The master comparison: condo loan approval by loan type

The table below is the whole argument on one screen. Read the “who decides” row first — it explains most of the other differences.

Criterion	Conventional (Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac)	FHA	VA
Who decides	The lender, on your specific loan file, using Fannie Mae’s Condo Project Manager or Freddie Mac’s Condo Project Advisor. Fannie Mae can also review a project itself through PERS.	HUD, or a Direct Endorsement lender acting under delegated authority (HRAP and DELRAP). The result is a project-level approval, not a file-level one.	A VA Regional Loan Center, after a lender submits the project’s organizational documents through WebLGY. VA legal counsel weighs in before a disposition code is entered.
Is there a public lookup?	No. Fannie Mae’s Condo Status Finder is limited to HOAs, managers, and authorized advisors; Freddie Mac’s Condo Project Advisor is limited to approved Sellers. Buyers cannot self-check.	Yes. HUD’s condominium search is genuinely public, free, and needs no login.	Yes. VA publishes a searchable condo report by project name, city, state, or six-character Condo ID.
Owner-occupancy requirement	No single flat number that applies to every transaction. It depends on the occupancy type of the loan and the review path, so ask your lender for the figure on your file.	At least 50% owner-occupied, reducible to 35% only if the project is more than 12 months old, the application goes through HRAP rather than DELRAP, and no more than 10% of units are 60+ days in arrears.	No published project-wide occupancy percentage equivalent to FHA’s. New projects instead face a presale test under 38 CFR 36.4360a: bona fide sale agreements from non-declarant purchasers on 70% of units.
Investor / single-entity concentration	Fannie Mae caps single-entity ownership at 20% of units in projects of 21 or more units, with tighter unit-count caps in small projects. Freddie Mac applies a comparable limit.	FHA may suspend a project’s eligibility once FHA-insured mortgages exceed 50% of units — a discretionary trigger, not a hard cap; the regulation fixes only a permissible 25–75% range. Under Single-Unit Approval, FHA may suspend new case numbers above 10% of units, and the two-unit limit in projects under ten is absolute.	Verify with the Regional Loan Center. VA’s published condo criteria do not turn on a concentration percentage the way the other two do.
Commercial space limit	Ineligible above 35% of total above- and below-grade square footage in non-residential use, under both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.	Maximum 35% of total floor area in commercial or non-residential use, with case-by-case exceptions available from HUD.	Verify with the Regional Loan Center; VA’s review is document-led rather than driven by a fixed square-footage ratio.
Delinquency threshold	No more than 15% of total units 60 or more days past due on assessments.	No more than 15% of units 60 or more days past due — and under 10% if the project wants the reduced owner-occupancy standard.	Verify with your lender. VA does not publish a flat delinquency percentage, but the reviewer will look at the association’s financial condition.
Reserve / budget requirement	At least 10% of budgeted assessment income to reserves, rising to 15% for loan applications dated on or after January 4, 2027 under Lender Letter LL-2026-03, with an exception for associations funding at a current reserve study’s highest recommended level.	At least 10% of aggregate monthly unit assessments allocated to reserves, unless an acceptable reserve study (no more than 36 months old, independent, with a site visit) justifies less.	Verify. The reviewer assesses the association’s finances without a published flat percentage.
Insurance requirement	Master property, liability, and — where applicable — fidelity or crime coverage. Insufficient master property insurance is one of Fannie Mae’s two most common ineligibility triggers.	Hazard, liability, and fidelity coverage per HUD’s project approval requirements, including flood coverage where the project sits in a special flood hazard area.	Coverage adequate to protect the security, reviewed alongside the legal documents. Confirm specifics with the Regional Loan Center.
Does approval expire?	No, because there is nothing to expire. Warrantability is re-decided on every loan, so a project that cleared last month can fail this month on a new insurance certificate.	Yes. Approvals run three years. Recertification must be filed no earlier than six months before expiration and no later than six months after, or the project must re-apply for Full Review.	No published expiration. Status persists in VA’s system, but it can be changed, so re-check it before the appraisal is ordered.
How a project gets approved	Nobody applies. The lender reviews the project during underwriting; boards fix conditions and submit documentation through Condo Status Finder or the lender.	The project or a DE lender files a formal application, including Form HUD-9992 and a full document package, through HRAP or DELRAP.	A lender submits the condominium’s organizational documents to the Regional Loan Center of jurisdiction and creates the record in WebLGY.

Two rows deserve to be read twice. Nobody applies for conventional approval — which is why boards so often believe their building is fine right up until a closing collapses. And only FHA has an expiration date, which creates a failure mode the other two cannot produce: a building that loses financing on a calendar date without a single thing changing on the property.

Conventional: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac warrantability

Conventional condo approval means a project satisfies the project standards in Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide B4-2 or Freddie Mac’s Seller/Servicer Guide Section 5701, so the lender can sell the loan. Fail either and the market calls the project non-warrantable.

The two agencies run parallel systems. Fannie Mae’s lender-facing tool is Condo Project Manager, with PERS for projects Fannie Mae reviews itself. Freddie Mac’s is Condo Project Advisor, where an approved Seller submits a Project Assessment Request and gets back a status. “Project Certified” means lighter project underwriting. “Not Eligible” means Freddie Mac will not buy a mortgage on any unit in that project, full stop.

Most thresholds line up: the 15% delinquency ceiling, the 35% commercial cap, comparable single-entity limits. That overlap is why the market treats warrantability as one thing. It is not one thing. The findings carry independent expiration logic — Freddie Mac’s PAR findings expire against the loan’s note date, and Sellers get no automatic warning — so ask your loan officer which investor the file is headed to before you assume a clean result travels.

For the full mechanics of the Fannie Mae side, including what the “blacklist” actually is, see our guide to Fannie Mae condo approval.

FHA: a public list, a filing, and a three-year clock

FHA is the only one of the three that behaves like a certification. A project applies, HUD or a delegated lender approves it, and the approval sits in a public database with a stated expiration date.

That structure comes from HUD’s 2019 condominium final rule, which rebuilt the program inside Handbook 4000.1 — Section II.C for project approval, with loan-level condominium policy at II.A.8.p. The rule also created Single-Unit Approval, which lets one unit in an unapproved project qualify on its own, subject to the 10% cap noted in the table.

Here is the detail boards miss. FHA’s reduced 35% owner-occupancy standard costs you the fast lane. A project using it must be submitted under HRAP, so HUD reviews it directly and the delegated lender path is off the table. Boards that pick a DELRAP lender expecting a quicker turnaround discover the mismatch only after the file is built. The other condition is just as easy to trip: no more than 10% of units may sit 60 or more days in arrears, which makes collections a project- approval issue, not only a budgeting one. Check both against your reserve study and your delinquency report before the board votes on anything.

Our dedicated walkthrough of the lookup and the filing lives at FHA approved condo.

VA: approval attaches to the legal documents

VA condo approval is a legal review first and a financial review second. A lender submits the condominium’s organizational documents — the declaration, bylaws, and covenants — to the Regional Loan Center of jurisdiction, VA counsel issues an opinion, and a reviewer records the disposition in WebLGY.

The rules sit in Chapter 16 of the VA Lender’s Handbook (Pamphlet 26-7). The gate is absolute: a condominium must be VA-approved before any unit in it is eligible for a VA-guaranteed loan. There is no VA equivalent of FHA’s Single-Unit Approval.

One legacy status catches people out. VA’s database includes HUD Accepted projects — buildings VA accepted on the strength of an old HUD/FHA acceptance before VA stopped taking those in December 2009. Those records remain valid for VA. They say nothing about whether the project’s FHA approval is still current today, so a building can read “HUD Accepted” on VA’s list while showing as expired on HUD’s. Full detail is in our VA approved condo guide.

Which lookup exists, and who can actually run it

The lookups are the most practical difference between the three regimes, and the pattern is the opposite of what most buyers expect.

Loan type	Tool	Who can run it	What you get
FHA	HUD condominium search	Anyone. No login.	Approval status and expiration date, searchable by name, city, or state.
VA	VA condo report	Anyone. No login.	Accepted, Accepted With Conditions, HUD Accepted, or Unaccepted, by name, city, state, or Condo ID.
Conventional (Fannie Mae)	Condo Status Finder	HOAs, management companies, and authorized advisors only. Buyers cannot register.	Whether the project carries an ineligible condition. “No findings” is not approval.
Conventional (Fannie Mae)	Condo Project Manager	Lenders only.	The project’s actual Fannie Mae status, fed into underwriting.
Conventional (Freddie Mac)	Condo Project Advisor	Freddie Mac-approved Sellers; authorized third-party originators get a lookup view.	Project Certified, Not Eligible, or feedback identifying the gaps.

Sit with that asymmetry, because it drives buyer behavior. The two government programs — used by a minority of condo buyers — publish free public status. Conventional financing, which most condo buyers actually use, is the one status no buyer can verify without a loan officer.

The practical consequence: a buyer can self-serve the FHA and VA answers in five minutes from a phone, and cannot self-serve the answer that matters most. That is precisely backwards from how people search, and it is why so many buyers arrive at an offer believing a building is “approved” on the strength of a lookup that never tested the loan they are using.

How a buyer figures out which loans work in a building

Work this sequence before you write an offer, not after. Each step returns something the others cannot.

1. Run both public lookups first. They are free and take minutes. Search HUD’s condominium database and VA’s condo report by project name. Record the FHA expiration date, not just the status.
2. Ask your loan officer to check the conventional side. Request that they run Condo Project Manager, Condo Project Advisor, or both, depending on where your loan will be sold. Ask for the actual status language, not a verbal “it looks fine.”
3. Ask which investor your file is headed to. A file bound for Freddie Mac and one bound for Fannie Mae can reach different conclusions on the same project.
4. Ask the association for the completed lender questionnaire. The condo questionnaire is where reserves, delinquencies, insurance, and litigation are stated in the lender’s own format.
5. Read the budget, the reserve study, and the master insurance declarations page. These three documents decide most outcomes across all three regimes. Check the reserve line and the deductible.
6. Confirm status again before the appraisal is ordered. Statuses move. FHA approvals lapse, VA dispositions change, and a new insurance certificate can flip a conventional result.

If you are not sure which association actually governs the building, our find my HOA guide covers how to identify it from public records.

How a board decides which approvals to pursue

Boards should treat conventional warrantability as mandatory maintenance and FHA or VA approval as an optional market decision.

The reasoning is simple. Warrantability requires no application — it requires funded reserves, adequate master insurance, resolved critical repairs, and delinquencies under control. Those are things a competent board should be doing regardless. Every unit in the building benefits, and nothing lapses.

FHA and VA are different. Each is a filing with a document package, and FHA’s has to be renewed inside a recertification window every three years. The question is whether your buyer pool actually contains those borrowers. A board near a military installation is leaving money on the table by ignoring VA. A luxury high-rise well above FHA loan limits is buying paperwork it will never use.

Ask the listing agents who work your building which loan types have shown up in the last two years of offers. That answer is more useful than any general rule, and it costs one phone call. Where the approvals interact with your governing documents or a rental cap, get the association’s attorney to read the language before you file.

Common mismatches and what they cost at resale

The expensive scenarios are the mismatches, where a building holds one approval and fails another. Three come up repeatedly.

FHA-approved but non-warrantable. The project holds a current HUD approval while a conventional lender declines it — usually over insurance adequacy, a documented critical repair, or reserves. Low-down-payment FHA buyers can transact; the larger conventional pool cannot. Sellers see this as unexplained slow demand.

Warrantable but not on VA’s list. Nothing is wrong with the building. No lender has ever submitted it for VA review. Veterans using their benefit simply cannot buy there until a lender files the package, which takes weeks nobody budgeted for.

Approved on paper, expired in fact. FHA’s three-year term ends, the board misses the recertification window, and the project must re-apply for Full Review instead of recertifying. Listings keep advertising “FHA approved” from a stale search result.

This is where the board-level tradeoff shows up years later. Every approval a building lacks removes a slice of the buyer pool from every future sale in it, and that thinning is invisible until the day an owner lists. A board that lets FHA approval lapse in 2026 is setting the bidding conditions for a 2031 seller who has never heard of Handbook 4000.1. Reserve and insurance decisions carry the same long shadow — see our guide to the HOA master policy for where coverage gaps start.

When the building qualifies for none of them

A project that fails all three is still financeable, but only outside the agency market. The routes narrow to portfolio lenders, non-QM lenders, credit unions, community banks, cash, and seller financing — each priced for a lender keeping the risk on its own books.

We compare every one of those routes, with the catches, in non-warrantable condo financing. The trigger-by-trigger view of what put the project there, and which items a board can realistically cure, is in non-warrantable condo.

One structural note before you assume the problem applies to you. Condo project review exists because of shared ownership of common elements. If the community is actually a planned unit development rather than a condominium, the project standards are far lighter — our PUD vs condo and condo association vs HOA guides explain how to tell which one you are in. And if the building sits in Florida, the state’s inspection and reserve mandates interact with all three regimes; start with Florida condo laws.

Bottom line

Stop asking whether a condo is “approved” and start asking which loan type you are using. Condo loan approval is three independent verdicts, and only the one that matters most to the average buyer — conventional warrantability — has no public lookup.

Buyers: run the FHA and VA searches yourself in five minutes, then make your loan officer produce the conventional status in writing before you write an offer. Boards: protect warrantability as a permanent operating obligation, because it reaches the most buyers and requires no filing, then add FHA or VA approval only where your actual offer history justifies the paperwork. Confirm every threshold on this page with your lender against the current rulebook before you act on it — these rules change, and two of them change again in January 2027.