Most Florida condo owners think they can just type their building's name into a website and find out whether it's on Fannie Mae's "blacklist." They can't. The list isn't public. Fannie Mae has never published it. The two tools that actually contain the data — Condo Project Manager and Condo Status Finder — are tier-restricted to lenders, HOA managers, and board members. Individual unit owners are not on the registration list. This is a guide to what the blacklist actually is, why your building might be on it, the five real ways to find out, and what to do once you have an answer.
The numbers are stark. A March 11, 2025 dataset that the Boston law firm Allcock Marcus obtained through a confidential source and shared with the Wall Street Journal showed 5,175 condominiums and HOAs on the Fannie Mae ineligibility list nationwide — 1,438 of them in Florida, which is roughly 28 percent of the national total. About 696 of those Florida buildings sit in the Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach tri-county area, and the South Florida count more than doubled in the two years preceding. For broader context, pair this with our Florida condo SIRS reserve funding guide, our milestone inspection guide, and our 2027 budget guide.
This article is general information for Florida condo unit owners and board members. It is not legal or financial advice. Talk to a licensed Florida community-association attorney or your lender before relying on any specific number or status.
What the blacklist actually is
The terminology trips up almost every news article on this topic, so the cleanest place to start is the vocabulary.
- Fannie Mae's formal label is "Ineligible Projects." The category is defined in Selling Guide section B4-2.1-03. Loans secured by units in projects flagged as ineligible cannot be purchased by Fannie Mae
- The status code in the system is "Unavailable." Fannie Mae's Condo Project Manager (CPM), which lenders use during underwriting, returns the result "Unavailable" for projects on the blacklist
- Freddie Mac's parallel label is "Not Eligible." Freddie's tool is Condo Project Advisor (CPA). The two GSEs operate independently but generally track each other
- "Non-warrantable" is industry slang. It is not a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac term. When real-estate professionals say a unit is "non-warrantable," they mean Fannie or Freddie won't purchase a conventional loan on it
What ineligibility actually blocks: conventional 30-year loans that would be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which represent the dominant share of US residential mortgages. It does not block FHA loans (a separate HUD program), VA loans (separate Department of Veterans Affairs program), portfolio loans that the originating bank holds on its own books, or cash buyers. So a "blacklisted" building is not unsellable — it just sells to a narrower buyer pool, often at a price that reflects the financing constraint.
Why Florida is overrepresented
Florida's 1,438 ineligible buildings out of 5,175 nationwide is a 28 percent share — far above Florida's roughly 6 percent share of the US housing stock. Three structural factors compound.
First, the post-Surfside regulatory cascade. After the June 24, 2021 partial collapse of Champlain Towers South killed 98 people, Florida enacted SB 4-D in 2022 and SB 154 in 2023, requiring milestone inspections and Structural Integrity Reserve Studies (SIRS) for condo buildings three or more habitable stories tall. Fannie Mae responded with Lender Letter LL-2021-14 on October 13, 2021, requiring lenders to review HOA meeting minutes and engineering reports and barring eligibility waivers for "significant deferred maintenance." Florida's own laws then forced buildings to generate the engineering documentation that the federal questionnaires were now demanding — and that documentation often surfaced reserve gaps, deferred maintenance, or insurance shortfalls that triggered ineligibility.
Second, insurance market pressure. Master-policy premiums in Florida have risen sharply since 2022, deductibles have climbed, and several carriers have non-renewed entire books of condo business. Buildings caught between rising costs and limited carriers often end up with deductibles or coverage gaps that violate Fannie Mae's standards.
Third, the lender questionnaire as the actual chokepoint. Becker attorney David L. Dockery has written that the post-2021 lender questionnaire asks volunteer board members to make engineering and financial representations they may not be qualified to make — and the answers feed directly into CPM. Allcock Marcus attorney Jake Marcus put it more bluntly to Mortgage Professional America: "I think it's the perfect financial storm for condominiums in Florida. There is just a lot happening in Florida with all the new requirements."
Five real ways to check
This is the section most articles on this topic get wrong. There is no public Fannie Mae lookup that a unit owner can use directly. Here are the five paths that actually work.
- 1. Ask your HOA board or property manager to run Condo Status Finder. Fannie Mae launched Condo Status Finder as the consumer-facing complement to CPM. Per Fannie Mae's own user manual, registration is open to "condo and co-op managers and board members" — not individual unit owners. If you ask politely, most boards will run the lookup. If the board refuses, that is itself a useful signal
- 2. Ask a lender during a transaction. When you list your unit for sale, the buyer's lender pulls the project's CPM status as part of underwriting. If the result is "Unavailable," the loan dies and the answer is unmistakable. The downside is that you find out at the worst possible moment — mid-deal — rather than in advance
- 3. Use a third-party law firm lookup. Several Florida condo-law firms have obtained copies of the list and offer free lookup forms as legal-services lead generation. Allcock Marcus runs the lookup at CondoBlacklist.com jointly with Florida firm Katzman Chandler. The results are usually accurate but the data is a snapshot, not live, so a building may have been reinstated since the firm pulled its copy
- 4. Watch the proxy red flags. If your building has any of these, the odds of ineligibility go up sharply: 30 or more years old, recent SIRS finding a reserve gap, master-policy non-renewal or carrier change in the past 12 months, master-policy per-unit deductible over $50,000, deferred maintenance flagged on a milestone inspection, active or pending special assessment, recent or ongoing litigation involving the association. None of these guarantee blacklisting, but the more that apply, the higher the probability
- 5. Search the HUD condlook database for FHA status. This is not the Fannie Mae blacklist (see next section), but it is publicly searchable and a building's FHA status often correlates with its Fannie Mae status because the underlying issues overlap
HUD condlook is FHA, not Fannie Mae
The most common confusion in news coverage of the blacklist is the conflation of two unrelated programs. The HUD database at entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm is a search tool for FHA-approved condominium projects. FHA approval and Fannie Mae eligibility are independent determinations made by different agencies under different rules.
A building can be FHA-approved but Fannie Mae ineligible. A building can be FHA-rejected but Fannie Mae available. The two systems often track each other because the underlying issues (insurance, reserves, maintenance) tend to affect both, but they are not the same list and a result in one does not give you a definitive answer about the other.
If you see an article telling Florida condo owners to "look up the Fannie Mae blacklist on the HUD website," it is misinforming you. The HUD website does not contain Fannie Mae's blacklist. It contains FHA's approval status — useful information in its own right, but a different question.
Getting off the list
The good news is that the system is becoming less opaque. Under FHFA-driven transparency commitments announced in late 2023, both GSEs opened appeal processes. Freddie Mac's appeal opened February 26, 2024, and Fannie Mae's owner-facing tool went live as Condo Status Finder. Allcock Marcus founder Edmund Allcock told reporters at the time: "We have always believed that making the list available or at least accessible would allow associations to understand the implications and allow them to take appropriate action."
The reinstatement path varies by trigger:
- Reserves below threshold — the board funds reserves to the required level (15 percent of annual budgeted assessment income effective January 4, 2027) or commissions a current reserve study and funds it at the highest recommended allocation
- Master-policy deductible over $50,000 per unit — the board buys down the deductible with a separate policy or renegotiates the master at compliant levels. The cap takes effect July 1, 2026
- Deferred maintenance flagged on a SIRS or milestone inspection — the board completes the work and provides documentation
- Insurance gaps — secure replacement-cost master coverage that meets the lender questionnaire requirements
- Litigation that affects project finances — resolve or settle the matter and document the outcome
The reinstatement timeline depends on the trigger and the documentation. There is no published standard turnaround. Siegfried Rivera attorney Eduardo J. Valdes wrote in his Miami Herald column that boards should submit reserve funding plans, litigation summaries, and updated insurance documentation as part of the appeal package. Becker shareholder Allison Hertz, board-certified in Condominium and Planned Development Law, has emphasized the disclosure obligation to current owners during the period the building remains on the list.
The 2026 standards reset
Lender Letter LL-2026-03 was issued March 18, 2026 and represents the largest single-day rewrite of condo lending standards since the post-Surfside response. Three deadlines apply between mid-2026 and early 2027.
What is often missed in the news coverage is that LL-2026-03 also loosens several requirements. The investor concentration limit was eliminated. The Waiver of Project Review eligibility expanded to projects with 10 or fewer units (was 5 or fewer). Florida's PERS pre-approval requirement for new attached projects was retired — new construction can now go straight through lender-delegated Full Review. Sandberg Phoenix attorney Todd Billy summarized the package as "the largest evolution of lending standards impacting condominium associations since 2023." Freddie Mac issued a parallel Bulletin 2026-C on the same day.
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- Keep yourself compliant on every statute change
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How Mosaic supports the documentation
The thread running through every blacklist trigger — reserves, insurance, deferred maintenance, litigation — is documentation. Boards that can answer the lender questionnaire quickly and accurately have a much better shot at staying off the list, and at responding fast when a lender flags something during a transaction. Mosaic is built around that documentation:
- Reserve study tracking. Current funding ratio, recommended allocation, and the gap between them — visible at a glance instead of buried in a PDF a previous treasurer downloaded years ago
- Insurance record management. Master policy, declarations page, deductible per unit, expiration dates, carrier history — all in one place ready to attach to a lender questionnaire
- Milestone inspection and SIRS storage. Reports, recommendations, and remediation documentation searchable by the AI assistant
- Owner ledger transparency. Buyers and their lenders can review unit-level financial history without weeks of management-company runaround
- 24/7 owner chat. Resident questions about the building's status, reserves, or insurance get answered immediately from the actual association documents, with source citations
For broader context on how the post-Surfside regulatory environment is reshaping Florida condo finance, see our 2026 legislative session recap, our Florida HOA insurance renewal playbook, our HOA financials evaluation guide, and our Florida HOA fees rising guide.
Frequently asked questions
Not directly. Fannie Mae does not publish the list publicly, and the two access tools are tier-restricted. Condo Project Manager (CPM), the system that flags projects as Unavailable, is for lenders only. Condo Status Finder, the consumer-facing tool launched as part of Fannie Mae's transparency commitments, allows registration only by HOA and condo managers and board members — not individual unit owners. Your practical options are to ask your HOA board or property manager to run the lookup, ask a lender during a real-estate transaction, use a third-party service like Allcock Marcus's free lookup form, or watch for the structural red flags that typically accompany ineligibility (recent SIRS gaps, master-policy non-renewal, deferred maintenance, deductibles over $50,000 per unit).
No. The HUD database at entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm is a search tool for FHA-approved condominium projects — a separate federal program. FHA approval and Fannie Mae eligibility are independent determinations, although both can be affected by the same underlying issues (insurance, reserves, maintenance). A building can be FHA-approved but Fannie Mae ineligible, or vice versa. For a Fannie Mae status answer, you need Condo Project Manager (lenders) or Condo Status Finder (managers and boards); for FHA approval status, you can search the HUD condlook database publicly.
The most recent verifiable count comes from a March 11, 2025 dataset that the Boston-based law firm Allcock Marcus obtained from a confidential source and provided to the Wall Street Journal: 5,175 condominiums or HOAs nationwide were on the Fannie Mae ineligibility list, of which 1,438 were in Florida — roughly 28 percent of the national total. About 696 of those Florida buildings were in the Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach tri-county area. South Florida's blacklist count more than doubled in the two years preceding the data pull. California ranked second nationally at 733 buildings. Fannie Mae itself does not publish or confirm these numbers.
LL-2026-03 was issued March 18, 2026 and represents the largest single-day rewrite of condo lending standards since the post-Surfside response in 2021. Three deadlines apply: a $50,000 maximum per-unit master-policy deductible takes effect July 1, 2026; the Limited Review process is retired August 3, 2026 (loans on established projects after that date use Full Review or Waiver of Project Review); and the reserve allocation minimum rises from 10 percent to 15 percent of annual budgeted assessment income effective January 4, 2027 (or use a current reserve study with highest-recommended funding). The Letter also contains loosening provisions: investor concentration limits were eliminated, the Waiver of Project Review eligibility expanded to projects with 10 or fewer units, and Florida's PERS pre-approval requirement for new attached projects was retired.
Reinstatement is now possible through the appeal processes that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac opened as part of FHFA-driven transparency commitments — Freddie's appeal opened February 26, 2024, and Fannie's owner-facing tool went live as Condo Status Finder. The board or manager registers in the relevant tool, identifies the trigger that caused ineligibility, and submits documentation showing the issue has been resolved. Common triggers and their fixes: insufficient reserves (fund to the 15 percent minimum or follow a current reserve study); master-policy deductibles over $50,000 per unit (buy-down policies or renegotiated coverage); deferred maintenance flagged on a SIRS or milestone inspection (complete the work and document); critical insurance gaps (secure replacement-cost master coverage); litigation that affects project finances (resolve or settle). The reinstatement timeline depends on the trigger and the documentation, and there is no published standard turnaround.
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