Wanted: List of FHA-Approved Condos

Arlene Goltz, an agent at Prospect Equities, asked if our sister site, ChicagoCondosOnline.com, lists all condos in Chicago that are FHA approved. It does now, but the list provided to us by the FHA is outdated and incomplete. For an Excel spreadsheet we created from that list, send an e-mail to Ric14@ChicagoCondosOnline.com.

Arlene, who has researched the topic, pointed us to a search engine on the HUD Web site that generates a list of 1,500 FHA-approved condos in the metro area (only 404 of them in the city). She estimates that the HUD list contains no more than 10 percent of all those approved. We asked the FHA for a complete, updated list, but were referred back to the Web site.

Says Arlene: "FHA spot approval [of a unit in a building not already approved] requires 51% owner occupied, no litigation, no right of first refusal. The no-litigation is starting to crop up everywhere. It doesn’t matter if it's covered by insurance; FHA says no pending litigation."

Here's a link to an FHA Spot Loan Approval Checklist, from Guaranteed Rate. It also lists: "There are no special assessments pending."

Additional info can be found on a blog post by Peter Thompson, a mortgage lender in Downers Grove.

If you can add to this topic, please post your comment.