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Reference

Findings by build era

The year a North Texas house was built predicts most of what an inspection will find in it — not because older is worse, but because each decade had its own standard practice, its own materials, and its own set of things that later turned out to matter.

In the condo documents

4 findings

What the declaration, minutes, budget and disclosures reveal.

Blocks financing

Project & Financial Health

Master policy and insurance shortfalls

Three master policy forms decide who insures the inside of a unit. The gap between the form the declaration requires and the policy actually in force is where owners get caught.

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Project & Financial Health

Developer control, phasing and turnover

While the declarant controls the board it sets the budget, the reserve contribution and the decision whether to investigate the building it built. Turnover is when that gets tested.

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Project & Financial Health

Pending or threatened litigation

Four words decide it: safety, structural soundness, habitability, functional use. Collections actions and insured slip-and-falls are published carve-outs. Construction defect is the category that stops loans.

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Project & Financial Health

Special assessments, pending and past

A special assessment is the settlement of an underfunding that already existed. The inspection that produced it disclosed the liability rather than creating it.

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In the budget or reserve study

4 findings

What the association's own financial reporting shows.

Blocks financing

Project & Financial Health

Too little of the budget going to reserves

The replacement-reserve allocation divided by budgeted assessment income is a bright-line agency test: 10 percent today, and 15 percent for Fannie Mae Full Reviews from 4 January 2027.

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Project & Financial Health

No current reserve study

No federal rule requires a reserve study, but the alternative route through a Full Review runs through one, and in the states that mandate studies its absence is a statutory failure.

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Project & Financial Health

Owner delinquency rates

Both agencies cap delinquency at 15 percent of units 60 or more days past due, tested separately for regular assessments and for each special assessment.

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Project & Financial Health

Underfunded reserves

Percent funded compares the reserve balance against accumulated wear. It forecasts special assessments well and predicts loan approval badly, because no agency uses it.

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On a physical inspection

9 findings

What someone looking at the building can actually see.

Building & Physical Condition

Concrete spalling and rebar corrosion

Spalled concrete is the end of a process that started years earlier inside the slab. The delaminated area found by sounding is normally far larger than the spalled area anyone can see.

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Building & Physical Condition

Deferred maintenance

Deferred maintenance is a portfolio state rather than a defect, and it accumulates because of how associations are governed, not because anyone was careless.

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Building & Physical Condition

Elevators, sprinklers and life safety

For most building conditions the association decides when to act. For life safety systems a code, a standard and an authority having jurisdiction decide, and the association's only choice is how well it planned for the cost.

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Building & Physical Condition

Envelope failure and water intrusion

Envelopes are designed to manage water, not to exclude it. Most leaks are a failed transition rather than a failed wall, and the leak almost never appears where the water got in.

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Building & Physical Condition

Parking structure condition

In a post-tensioned deck, industry sources report that few — often less than 1% — of broken tendons produce any visible sign. Absence of visible distress is not evidence the structure is intact.

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Building & Physical Condition

Roof condition as a common element

The roof is the largest common element in most buildings and the one nobody looks at. Deferral stays invisible until the insulation is wet, at which point the project changes character.

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Not a financing issue

Building & Physical Condition

Aging plumbing risers and stacks

Replacing a riser means opening a wall in every unit on the stack, top to bottom. The plumbing is a minority of the cost, and the restoration is the project.

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Not a financing issue

Building & Physical Condition

Central and common HVAC systems

In a two-pipe building nobody can have heat while the building is in cooling mode. That is a design characteristic, not a maintenance failure, and no board can fix it without replumbing the building.

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Not a financing issue

Building & Physical Condition

Electrical service capacity in older towers

EV charging is usually what makes an association discover what its electrical capacity actually is. The answer comes from metered demand data, not from the year on the certificate of occupancy.

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When the lender reviews the project

4 findings

What agency project review tests for.

Blocks financing

Project & Financial Health

Short-term rentals and condotel character

The test is how the project operates, not what the deed says. Rental pooling, a registration desk and daily letting are the markers. A handful of short-term listings is not.

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Blocks financing

Project & Financial Health

Single-entity ownership concentration

Fannie Mae's limits are two units in projects up to 20 units and 20 percent above that. Exceeding them makes the project ineligible, and the 2026 changes did not touch this rule.

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Project & Financial Health

Commercial and non-residential floor area

Ground-floor retail is not a problem. Commercial floor area above 35 percent of the project is. The test is floor area, not the number of units, and the two produce very different answers.

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Project & Financial Health

Investor and non-owner-occupancy ratio

The 50 percent investor limit repeated across the internet is no longer a Fannie Mae rule. It was retired in March 2026. FHA's owner-occupancy minimum is a separate rule and it still applies.

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Through a state-mandated report

3 findings

What milestone inspections and structural reserve studies surface.

Blocks financing

Building & Physical Condition

Milestone inspection findings

A crack is not a finding. Florida's statute expressly excludes cracks, sagging, deflection and signs of leakage unless the engineer judges them symptomatic of substantial structural deterioration.

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Building & Physical Condition

Facade and balcony safety programmes

There is no national facade requirement. Coverage depends entirely on the city, county or state, and the difference between a routine filing and a financing problem is whether the findings were closed out.

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Building & Physical Condition

Structural Integrity Reserve Study

A SIRS reserves for eight structural component groups on the basis of a visual inspection. It establishes what a building must fund. It does not establish what condition the building is in.

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