The asymmetry, stated first
Four rulebooks decide whether a condominium unit can be financed. Their transparency to the person actually buying the unit is wildly uneven, and the gap is the most useful thing on this page.
- FHA — public. HUD publishes a searchable list of approved condominium projects. Anyone can use it, no registration.
- VA — partly public. VA offers a customised condo report request to the public; the working lookup lenders use is inside a portal that is not open to buyers.
- Fannie Mae — not available to buyers. Condo Project Manager, the tool that assigns projects their status, is restricted to Fannie-approved seller/servicers, with limited access for correspondent lenders. Mortgage brokers cannot use it. The general public cannot use it.
- Freddie Mac — not available to buyers. Condo Project Advisor is a seller-facing tool.
So the most common conventional loan in the country runs against a project standard that the buyer has no way to check. Fannie Mae says this itself: its status tool "does not publish decisions to parties other than lenders and HOAs; homebuyers must ask their lender or HOA to check status." That is the honest answer to "how do I find out if my building is on the list", and it disappoints people who have been told a lookup exists.
FHA: the one genuinely public lookup
HUD's FHA-approved condominium search is the official tool. It returns whether a project appears in FHA's system at all, the project's FHA condominium ID, name and location, and its approval status with the associated status and expiration dates.
There is a second, less-known HUD tool worth using alongside it: the Condominium Logging Package Search, which shows the status of project packages that have been submitted for review or recertification. This is how you distinguish a project whose approval has lapsed with a recertification actually filed from a project whose approval has lapsed and where nothing is happening. The two searches together answer a question neither answers alone.
Both are free, both are open, and both are the correct place to start if FHA financing is in play. What they mean, though, is narrower than the word "approved" suggests — which is the subject of the next section.
Seven things the FHA lookup does not tell you
An "approved" result is a real fact with real limits. Read against the rules, here is what it leaves out.
- It does not confirm that a particular unit is financeable. FHA approval is project-level. The unit, the appraisal, the borrower and the loan-level questionnaire all still have to clear.
- It does not show current FHA concentration. FHA insures up to 50 percent of the units in an approved project, and HUD may suspend the issuance of new case numbers in a project that exceeds the limit. A project can read "approved" and be closed to new FHA lending.
- It does not tell you whether Single-Unit Approval is possible. A project absent from the list is not automatically out of reach — single-unit approval may be available, subject to its own caps of 10 percent of units, or a maximum of two FHA-insured mortgages in projects with fewer than ten units.
- It does not show how many single-unit slots remain. Two buyers can be under contract in the same small building with only one able to close.
- Listings can be stale relative to a recent lapse, a suspension or a pending recertification.
- It says nothing about VA, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. A project can be FHA-approved and non-warrantable, and the reverse.
- It does not surface the reason a project was rejected, withdrawn or allowed to lapse. Approval that expired because nobody filed the paperwork looks identical to approval that expired because the project would now fail.
That last point deserves emphasis, because it cuts both ways. Absence from the list is not evidence of a problem. FHA approval costs money and effort and has to be renewed every three years; many small, sound, well-run associations have never sought it because no buyer ever asked them to.
VA: a public request page and a lender portal
VA's public-facing entry point is the customised condo report on VA's Loan Guaranty site at lgy.va.gov/lgyhub/condo-report. A large number of third-party pages still link to VA's older Veterans Information Portal condo report, which is retired; the Loan Guaranty page is the current one.
The lookup lenders actually work from is inside WebLGY, under Loan then Condo, where "Search Condo" requires a state and returns approved condominium records read-only. That portal is not open to the public.
Three things to hold in mind when reading a VA result:
- VA approves the project's legal documents, not its finances. The unit, the appraisal and the borrower are separate questions.
- "Accepted With Conditions" is a real status and is not unconditional approval. VA also uses Accepted Without Conditions, Pending, Rejected, Suspended, Unknown, and a legacy HUD Accepted status left over from the period before December 2009, when VA still accepted FHA project appraisals in lieu of its own review.
- VA has no single-unit path. If the project's documents are not approved, the route is submission — and unlike FHA, both lenders and veterans may submit a project for review.
Fannie Mae: two tools, neither of them for you
Condo Project Manager is Fannie Mae's web-based tool for determining whether a project meets its eligibility requirements. It walks a lender through certification and returns a status: Approved by Fannie Mae, Unavailable, Guide Ineligible, Conditional Approval, or Incomplete. Access is limited to Fannie-approved seller/servicers registered through their corporate administrator, with correspondent lenders able to view approved projects and run reports. Brokers cannot access it. Neither can the public. An "Unavailable" status is not merely one lender's opinion — it is itself an ineligibility trigger.
The set of projects flagged Unavailable is what press coverage calls a "blacklist." No such roster is published. It exists inside a restricted system, the reason for a status appears in that system's comments, and a lender can request a status review if circumstances change. Reported project counts circulating in trade and legal commentary are not Fannie figures and should not be treated as such.
The Condo Status Finder is newer and is the tool people are usually reaching for. Fannie describes it as "a free, online tool to help homeowner associations (HOAs), their management companies, and authorized advisors understand their condo project's status," letting them check in real time whether Fannie Mae has identified conditions making the project ineligible. Users must register, identify their role and accept legal terms. It returns one of four results: no findings; ineligible conditions, with brief descriptions; no project found; or multiple projects found, meaning the search was too broad.
It is not an open public search, and a "no findings" result is worth reading precisely: Fannie's wording indicates an absence of identified ineligible conditions, which is weaker than an affirmative finding of warrantability. Freddie Mac's Condo Project Advisor is likewise a seller-facing tool.
What to do instead
Given the asymmetry, the productive route runs through two people and a document request.
The lender. Ask which rulebook the loan runs under, whether the project has been reviewed, what status it returned, and what specifically caused any finding. Ask which review path applies given the application date — with Limited and Streamlined Review retired for applications dated on or after 3 August 2026, a full project review is now the norm. Ask whether the other GSE would reach a different answer.
The association or its manager. They can use the Condo Status Finder themselves, and many now do. More importantly they hold the underlying evidence: the budget with its reserve line, the most recent reserve study, the most recent structural or milestone inspection report, the special assessment history, the litigation disclosure, the master insurance certificate, and any completed project questionnaire.
The public records. Where a jurisdiction runs a mandatory structural inspection or certification programme, its filings and any recorded notices are frequently public through the local building department or clerk. That is often the fastest independent read on the condition question, because failing such an inspection is itself a critical-repair trigger for both GSEs.
Finally, calibrate. Checking is prudent and the answer is usually unremarkable. The great majority of condominium projects clear these reviews, and the reason the lookups feel ominous is that they are only ever consulted when someone is already worried. A project that is absent from FHA's list, not VA-approved and never reviewed by a GSE is not a distressed project — it is a project nobody has yet had a reason to submit.
Primary sources: HUD's FHA-approved condominium search, HUD's condominium package logging search, and Fannie Mae's Condo Status Finder information page.
Common questions
Where is the official FHA condo lookup?
HUD publishes it at entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm, and it is open to the public with no registration. It returns whether a project is in FHA's system, its project ID and location, and its approval status and dates. HUD also runs a condominium package logging search that shows whether a submission or recertification is in progress, which the main lookup does not reveal.
Can I check whether a condo is warrantable myself?
No. Fannie Mae's Condo Project Manager is restricted to approved seller/servicers with limited correspondent access, brokers and the public have none, and Freddie Mac's Condo Project Advisor is seller-facing. Fannie's Condo Status Finder is open to homeowner associations, management companies and authorised advisors after registration. Fannie states plainly that homebuyers must ask their lender or HOA to check status.
Is there a public list of blacklisted condos?
No. The projects Fannie Mae flags as Unavailable exist inside Condo Project Manager, which is restricted to lenders, and no roster is published. Project counts circulating in trade and legal commentary are not Fannie Mae figures. The status has real consequences - an Unavailable status is itself an ineligibility trigger - but it is not something a buyer can search.
My building is not on the FHA list. Is that bad?
Not by itself. FHA approval costs money and effort and expires after three years, and many small, financially sound associations have simply never sought it. The lookup also does not distinguish between approval that lapsed because nobody filed the paperwork and approval that lapsed because the project would now fail. Check the package logging search for a pending submission, then ask the association directly.
Does an approved status mean my loan will go through?
No. Every one of these approvals is project-level. The unit, the appraisal, the borrower and the loan-level documentation still have to clear separately. An FHA-approved project can also already be at FHA's 50 percent insurance concentration ceiling, at which point HUD may suspend the issuance of new case numbers even though the project still reads as approved.
Where do I find the VA condo lookup?
VA's public page is the customised condo report at lgy.va.gov/lgyhub/condo-report. Many third-party sites still link to VA's retired Veterans Information Portal version. The full lookup lenders use sits inside the WebLGY portal, which the public cannot access. Remember that VA approves the project's legal documents, and that Accepted With Conditions is a distinct status from unconditional approval.