For a lender, condo documents are the records that show whether a condo project meets Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac eligibility requirements. A Full Review usually relies on the project questionnaire, governing documents, budget, reserve study, financial statements, master insurance, meeting minutes, inspection reports and litigation information. Neither GSE prescribes a fixed list, so lender overlays fill the gaps.
If you process condo loans, the real question is which documents are still missing, who has them, and whether what came back will hold up in underwriting.
Which condo documents does a Full Review need?
A Full Review asks one question of a condo project: does it meet Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac eligibility requirements, plus your lender’s own overlays? Each of the condo documents in the package answers part of that question. The project questionnaire, either Freddie Mac Form 476 or Fannie Mae Form 1076, collects the association’s answers in one place.
The same document set comes up on file after file, which makes the request itself a strong case for automating condo document acquisition instead of rebuilding it by hand every time.
Use this to check a condo package for completeness before it goes to underwriting.
| Document | What it shows the underwriter | Who usually holds it | What commonly makes it incomplete |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project questionnaire (Form 1076, Form 476 or a lender form) | The association’s answers to the eligibility questions, in one form | The association or its management company | Unanswered, handwritten or hard-to-read responses; answers that conflict with the documents |
| Governing documents (declaration or CC&Rs, bylaws, articles, rules) | The project’s legal structure and how the association is run | The association or its management company | Risk language buried in long documents; provisions that conflict with the questionnaire |
| Annual budget | At least 10% of assessment income to replacement reserves (15% for applications dated on or after Jan 4, 2027) | The association or its management company | Special assessments shown in place of the reserve allocation |
| Reserve study (when used instead of the budget test) | Reserve adequacy at the study’s highest recommended funding level | Requested through the association or its management company | Baseline funding only, which no longer qualifies (applications dated on or after Aug 3, 2026) |
| Financial statements | Whether budgeted reserves actually exist, and how many owners are behind on assessments | The association or its management company | Figures that don’t match the budget or the questionnaire |
| Master insurance certificate | Coverage, and a per-unit deductible of $50,000 or less (applications dated on or after Jul 1, 2026) | Requested through the association or its management company | Deductible terms that can’t be checked against the cap |
| Meeting minutes | Critical repairs, special assessments and board decisions not yet in the budget | The association or its management company | Risk language buried in long minutes |
| Inspection and engineering reports | Structural or mechanical condition, from any report completed in the past three years | Requested through the association or its management company | An appraisal offered in place of the report |
| Litigation information | Whether the association is party to a lawsuit that could affect eligibility | Requested through the association or its management company | Ambiguous answers that trigger a condition |
For a plain breakdown of what CC&Rs and bylaws each control, start with our CC&Rs guide.
Is there an official GSE document list?
No. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac set the eligibility requirements, but neither publishes a fixed list of documents a lender must collect. Fannie Mae’s project standards FAQs say Fannie Mae “is not prescriptive on what documentation lenders obtain,” and both GSEs describe their example sources, such as meeting minutes, financial statements and engineer’s reports, as “neither prescriptive nor exhaustive.”
Not prescriptive, not exhaustive
The eligibility requirements are set. The evidence behind them is the lender’s to assemble and defend.
For processors, the checklist above is the evidence a Full Review typically relies on, not a regulatory minimum. Your lender’s overlays can add documents, so confirm the overlay list with underwriting before the first order, not after the first condition.
For underwriters, it puts the weight on documentation: an eligibility decision is only as defensible as the record of which documents it relied on and what each one said. How a project review reaches an eligibility decision is its own subject, but it starts with a complete, legible package.
Full Review or waiver: which applies to your file?
It depends on the project’s size and the loan’s application date, not the calendar. For conventional loans with application dates on or after August 3, 2026, Fannie Mae’s Limited Review and Freddie Mac’s Streamlined Review are no longer available, so Full Review becomes the standard path for projects with more than 10 units. Freddie Mac’s condominium FAQ limits Streamlined Review to mortgages with an application received date before that cutoff. Applications dated earlier may still follow the old rules, depending on your lender’s implementation policy, and lenders were allowed to adopt the change early, so check yours.
Smaller projects may not need a project review at all. The project standards in Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide extend the Waiver of Project Review to attached projects of 2 to 10 units, as long as a project of 5 to 10 units isn’t part of a master association. Freddie Mac expanded its exemption from review to match. If you’re not sure whether a project sits inside a larger community, it helps to know how master associations work, because that one fact can take a 6-unit project out of waiver eligibility.
Full Review isn’t the only route the Selling Guide lists. It also covers the Project Eligibility Review Service (PERS) and FHA-approved condo review eligibility, so confirm your file’s path first. For what changed when Limited Review retired, go to the source: Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 and Freddie Mac Bulletin 2026-C, both issued March 18, 2026.
Which documents carry the most eligibility risk?
Every document in the package matters, but three groups carry hard rules with dates attached: the reserve documents, the master insurance certificate, and the inspection reports and minutes that reveal repairs.
Budget and reserve study
The budget must allocate at least 10% of assessment income to replacement reserves, and that minimum rises to 15% for loan applications dated on or after January 4, 2027. Special assessments can’t stand in for the allocation.
When the budget falls short, a reserve study can support adequacy instead, as an exception. The lender must then use the study’s highest recommended funding level, and for applications dated on or after August 3, 2026, baseline funding no longer qualifies. The January 2027 reserve change raises the stakes here. For the balance sheet, delinquency report and reserve study, see how to read association financial statements.
Master insurance certificate
For loan applications dated on or after July 1, 2026, a master policy with a per-unit deductible above $50,000 makes the project ineligible. That makes the insurance certificate a pass/fail document, so the deductible terms must be clear enough to check against the cap. The $50,000 master policy deductible cap applies however strong the rest of the package is, and the policy must still meet the Selling Guide’s other insurance requirements.
Inspection reports and minutes
Fannie Mae requires lenders to review a complete copy of any structural or mechanical inspection report completed within the past three years, whether the inspection was mandatory or not, and an appraisal alone doesn’t satisfy it. Freddie Mac applies the same three-year window. In a package that can run to hundreds of pages, the line that matters may be one sentence in one set of minutes, which is why small misses here are so costly.
Who holds condo documents?
Most condo documents sit with the condo association or the management company it hires, and the first job on any file is confirming you’ve found the right association and the right contact. Contact details change, some projects are self-managed by volunteer boards, and a project inside a larger community may answer to more than one association, each with its own records.
Not every document comes from the same desk. Who issues the insurance certificate, the reserve study, the inspection reports and the litigation information can vary by project, so ask the association where to request each one on the first contact, not the third.
Fees are part of the request too. Document fees and rush charges can land on the borrower, so raise them at the start of the file. How condo documents get from the association to an underwriting-ready file is a workflow question of its own; this checklist stays with what the file needs.
Why do condo packages come back incomplete?
Incomplete packages are rarely anyone’s fault. Many associations are run by volunteer boards or small management teams, and questionnaire formats vary from lender to lender. The result is a familiar set of gaps:
- Questionnaires returned incomplete, handwritten or hard to read
- Answers that need clarification or conflict with the supporting documents
- Risk language buried deep in governing documents or minutes
- A missing document underwriting needs before the file can move
- Document fees and rush charges that surprise the borrower
Each gap usually costs more than the time it takes to fix. Underwriting issues a condition, the file goes back to processing, and the chase starts again with the same association. On a file with a rate lock, that second cycle is where the closing date starts to slip. Title teams know the pattern too: several of the HOA problems that delay closings show up on condo files as well.
For loan officers, the borrower only sees the date. It helps to explain early that a condo loan depends on documents from a third party the lender doesn’t control, and that the fastest way through is a complete package the first time.
Getting complete condo packages with Rexera
Rexera, a RealPage company, acquires condo documents and questionnaires nationwide, from governing and financial documents to insurance, inspection, reserve, litigation and meeting records. You can order at the loan level from Encompass, by API or in the Rexera portal, turning the manual condo busywork into a 2-minute order while you keep real-time status on every request.
When the package needs an eligibility read, Condo Review (automated) and Condo Review Plus (human-supported) produce a standardized eligibility summary against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac requirements. It flags missing items, guideline conflicts, high-risk language and edge cases, with citations back to the source documents. Rexera can acquire FHA and VA condo documents but doesn’t perform formal FHA or VA package reviews. Both review options are part of Rexera’s condo project review service.
Consistency matters on the title side too. After Hankin & Pack standardized its HOA document ordering with Rexera, Jordan Edgerton, VP of Closing Operations, put it simply: “It helps us from a consistency standpoint, that’s one of our core values.” Read how Hankin & Pack standardized its HOA document process.
Book a demo or email sales@rexera.com.
Disclaimer:
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For interpretation of specific laws or legal obligations, consult qualified legal counsel.
