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Full Review.: What to Check Before You Buy a Condo in the United States: A Plain-English Buyer's Guide to Condominium Mortgage Approval, Reserves and
Paperback
Series: The Condo Financing Handbooks, Book 2
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 13 2026
Pages: 44
Weight: 0.16
Height: 0.11 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Offer accepted. Inspection fine. Appraisal fine. Then around week three the lender says the project does not qualify - and everyone has already spent money.
For loan applications dated on or after 3 August 2026, the fast-track review pathways were retired. Nearly every condo project with more than ten units now goes through Full Review - budget, reserves, delinquencies, insurance, litigation, special assessments, inspection reports - regardless of how much you put down.
Buyers who have done this before, and agents who have sold condos for twenty years, are still operating on the old assumption.
And a second date ahead of you
On 4 January 2027 the minimum reserve allocation rises from 10 per cent to 15 per cent of assessment income. Most associations were not meeting 10. If you buy into a building funding at 6 or 7 per cent, you are buying a problem with a date on it - either a substantial dues increase, or a building your own buyer cannot finance when you come to sell.
What is inside
- The five-minute calculation that predicts most of your risk, using two numbers from the budget
- What Full Review examines, item by item
- The ten documents to request, when to ask, and the four that actually matter
- The master policy deductible cap that has caught well-run buildings
- How to check a building before you offer - there is no public list, and this trips everyone
- Where state inspection law meets federal lending policy
- Timing, contingencies, and the questionnaire delay that kills transactions
- What to do if the building you want is not financeable
- Red flags ranked, three buildings compared, and a full checklist
Written for buyers, not lenders
This is education, not advice. It will not tell you whether to buy. It explains what the documents mean and which questions get useful answers, so that when you speak to your lender, your agent and your attorney, you already know what you are looking at.
The single highest-value thing a condo buyer can do right now costs nothing: ask your loan officer to check the project before you make an offer. Almost nobody does, because until 2026 it usually did not matter.
This is federal lending policy, so it applies in every state - and it can change without a legislature. Every figure carries a note telling you why it may have moved and who to ask.
Book Two of The Condo Financing Handbook.
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