Condo Lending Rules Just Changed: What Every Condo Owner Needs to Know Before January

The short version

If you own a Chicago condo, or you sit on your association's board, there are four things to take from this article. Everything below the list explains them.

1. Lenders now look at your building much harder than they did in July. They always reviewed condo documents. As of August 3, the shortcut version of that review is gone, and most buildings over ten units get the full financial examination on every sale.

2. Small buildings came out ahead. Two- to four-unit condo projects now skip the deep review entirely. Five- to ten-unit projects skip it too, as long as the building is not part of a larger development.

3. The big deadline is January 4, 2027, and it is a reserve funding standard. Buildings that go through the full review will generally need 15% of annual assessment income going into reserves, up from 10%, unless a current reserve study supports a different number.

4. If your reserves are thin, your board needs to start now, not in December. A full reserve study can take roughly two to three months to produce. Changing a budget takes a board meeting and a vote. Neither happens over a holiday weekend.

If your building has more than ten units, a volunteer board, and assessments that have not gone up in a few years, this article is written for you. Keep reading.

Why this matters to an owner, not just a lender

A buyer can have excellent credit, a strong income, a substantial down payment, and a fully underwritten loan, and still lose a Chicago condo. The problem isn't the buyer. It's the building.

Lenders have always reviewed condo buildings. When someone buys a unit, the lender underwrites two things: the borrower, and the project. That second part has existed for decades, and buildings have always had to meet standards. What changed on August 3 is how thorough the building side of that review has to be, and how many buildings it now applies to.

I've written before that when you buy a condo, the whole building is your investment. These rules put more of that same idea into the lender's process.

I have seen how invisible building-level risk can be inside an actual transaction. On one deal, the only early trace of what became a roughly $60,000-per-unit special assessment was a brief mention buried in minutes from a meeting a year earlier. We found it because we read them, and then kept asking questions until someone gave us a straight answer. I wrote about that deal in more detail in my post on Chicago condo red flags.

First, the vocabulary

Most coverage of this assumes you speak lender. Five terms carry the whole article.

Project review. Before a lender will finance your unit, it reviews the building and the association, separately from reviewing the buyer. "Project" means your condo association and its property.

Full Review. The thorough version. The lender collects and examines the association's budget, how much is in reserves and how much goes in each year, how many owners are behind on assessments, the master insurance policy, any lawsuits, and any special assessment that is approved or being discussed.

Waiver of Project Review. The building skips that deep review. Freddie Mac calls its version Exempt From Review. A waiver is based on the type and size of project, not on the building being in good shape.

Warrantable. A building that meets Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's standards, meaning a buyer can get a conventional loan there. Non-warrantable buildings are hard to finance conventionally, and the loans that exist come with higher rates and larger down payments.

Reserves and reserve study. Reserves are the association's savings account for major repairs. A reserve study is a professional report that inventories what your building will need to replace, when, and what it will cost, then recommends how much to save each year.

What changed, and when

August 3, 2026: the shortcut review is gone.

Until this month, a well-qualified buyer, usually one making a larger down payment, could often use an abbreviated review called Limited Review at Fannie Mae or Streamlined Review at Freddie Mac. The lender confirmed some basics about the building and moved on without examining the association's full financial picture. That option is retired for loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026.

This was not a niche path. The Community Associations Institute estimates it accounted for roughly 40% of all condo project reviews.

The trigger is the application date, not the closing date. An application dated before August 3 can still close under the old process. If you are under contract with a buyer who applied in July, this did not change your deal.

Which buildings skip the deep review. Here is the actual list. Fannie Mae waives project review for:

• Units in condo projects of two to four units, new or established. No conditions on size or association type.
• Units in condo projects of five to ten units, as long as the project is not part of a master association or a larger development. A master association is an umbrella association sitting over multiple buildings or sub-associations, common in townhome developments and larger complexes. A standalone Chicago six-flat usually is not part of one. If a five- to ten-unit building is inside a master association, it goes to Full Review.
• Detached condo units. A detached condo is a freestanding home owned under a condominium declaration rather than as a single-family house. They exist in Chicago but are uncommon; if you live in a stacked flat or a walk-up, this is not you.
• Certain refinances, covered below.

What a waiver removes, including the 15%. When project review is waived, the lender does not analyze the association's finances, reserves, or owner-occupancy at all. The 15% reserve standard is part of the Full Review analysis. A two-unit or four-unit condo project that qualifies for the waiver is not being measured against it.

What the waiver does not remove is the basic eligibility layer. The lender still confirms the project is not flagged as ineligible in Fannie Mae's system, that insurance requirements are met, that the property itself qualifies, and that the association is not being dissolved or in bankruptcy proceedings. The project also cannot be one of a handful of excluded types, like a condo-hotel or a timeshare. For certain refinances the lender confirms there are no unaddressed critical repairs, meaning significant structural or safety problems the building has not fixed, and no evacuation orders, meaning a government agency has ordered residents out. Those are unusual situations.

So: no deep financial review, no reserve percentage test, but not a complete pass either. One caution that applies throughout this article. Individual lenders are free to ask for more than the agencies require. A waiver means Fannie Mae does not require the review. It does not guarantee your buyer's particular lender will skip it.

So no, it is not the case that everything with five or more units gets a Full Review. Five to ten can qualify. Eleven and up generally cannot, unless the unit is detached or the transaction is one of the refinances above.

This applies to refinancing, not just buying.

Most coverage frames all of this around purchases. These rules govern loan applications, and a refinance is a loan application. If you plan to refinance when rates move, your building gets reviewed the same way it would for a buyer, and a building that has fallen out of compliance can cost you a refinance you were counting on.

There are two relief valves, both narrower than they sound. Project review is waived for a limited cash-out refinance of a loan Fannie Mae already owns, at a maximum loan-to-value ratio of 80%, and that waiver does not extend to co-ops. Fannie Mae also waives project review for loans made under its high LTV refinance option, which is a specific program with its own eligibility rules rather than a general allowance for anyone with high loan-to-value.

If refinancing is part of your plan for the next couple of years, your association's condition is part of that plan whether you were thinking about it or not.

One rule actually got easier.

The investor concentration cap is gone. Previously, an established building where more than half the units were rentals rather than owner-occupied could be ineligible for financing on investor loans. That restriction was retired in March for established projects under Full Review. It applies regardless of building size.

So yes, a building with more investors than owner-occupants is no longer disqualified on that basis alone. Two caveats. Individual lenders can still apply their own stricter requirements, so ask rather than assume. And new or newly converted projects still have their own presale and occupancy requirements, which did not change.

I will add a personal view here that has nothing to do with the rules. I still pay attention to owner-occupancy when I evaluate a building with buyers. In my experience owners who live in a building are more willing to spend on maintenance and upgrades, because they are the ones living with the result, and buildings with lower turnover tend to have people who know each other and show up to meetings. That is my observation from twelve years of showing these buildings, not a rule, and there are well-run buildings with heavy investor ownership. But the agencies dropping the requirement does not mean I stopped looking at it.

The other ownership rule did not go away, and it is the one that actually bites.

These two get confused constantly. The rule that was retired counts renters in aggregate. The rule that survived counts how much one owner controls, and it is a much easier line to cross.

Fannie Mae still treats a project as having a single-entity ownership problem when one entity, meaning the same individual, investor group, partnership, or corporation, owns more than 20% of the units in a building of 21 or more units, or two units in a building of five to twenty units.

That second threshold is the one that catches Chicago buildings. In a six-flat, one person owning three units breaks it. Same in a fifteen-unit building. It happens constantly in small vintage conversions, where an original developer or an early buyer kept a couple of units as rentals.

Two things surprise people. Spouses count as a single entity, since Fannie treats a partnership as including a spousal or domestic partnership, so a married couple holding three units in a twelve-unit building has the same problem an LLC would. And units the association itself owns and rents, which happens when a building takes a unit back through foreclosure, count toward the limit.

This is tested where the project actually gets reviewed, so a building small enough for a waiver is in a different position than one going through Full Review. Freddie Mac's threshold has also historically been more permissive on larger projects, so a building that fails at one agency may work at the other. Both are questions for the lender rather than assumptions to make.

July 1, 2026: two insurance changes.

These are worth translating, because the language is opaque.

Your building carries a master insurance policy covering the structure and common areas. Like any policy, it has a deductible, and many master policies set that deductible per unit. As of July 1, that per-unit deductible cannot exceed $50,000. If your building's policy carries a higher one, that is now a financing problem, and boards should check their policy rather than assume.

Separately, unit owners have to carry an HO-6 policy, the individual condo owner's policy that covers the inside of your unit, when the master policy either does not cover interior items or has a per-unit deductible. It has to be written on a replacement cost basis, meaning it pays what it costs to rebuild rather than the depreciated value. Most owners already carry one. The change is that it is now required in more situations and has to be written a specific way.

Reserves changed on two separate dates, and the difference matters.

There are two ways for a building to satisfy the reserve requirement. Either the annual budget allocates a set percentage of assessment income to reserves, or the building has a professional reserve study and funds according to it.

Effective August 3, 2026, the reserve study route got stricter. A study can still be used instead of the flat percentage, but the budget must fund at the highest level the study recommends, the study must have been completed or updated within the last three years, and the cheapest funding model, called baseline funding, no longer counts. Baseline funding is the approach where reserve balances are allowed to drop nearly to zero as long as they never go negative. That is no longer acceptable.

Effective January 4, 2027, the flat percentage rises from 10% to 15% for projects reviewed under Full Review. To answer the question directly: it is 15% of total annual budgeted assessment income, not 15% of the reserve balance and not 15% of the building's value. An association collecting $400,000 a year in assessments would budget $60,000 a year to reserves rather than $40,000.

So the reserve study is a genuine alternative to the 15%, not a loophole that opens in January. It tightened in August, and the percentage it lets you avoid gets larger in January.

Was there a grace period? The phase-in is the grace period. The agencies announced all of this on March 18, 2026. The review change took effect roughly four and a half months later, and the reserve percentage lands about nine and a half months after the announcement. That is more notice than boards usually get, though it is still a short window for an association that has to commission a study, hold meetings, and pass a budget.

Are a lot of Chicago buildings suddenly non-warrantable? Nobody has a reliable count, and I am not going to invent one. The honest answer is that the number of buildings where financing becomes a question went up, and the only building whose answer you can actually find out is your own.

This has drawn real pushback. The National Association of Realtors has told the agencies that a 50% increase in required reserves on this timeline creates an affordability problem, particularly for owners on fixed incomes. Worth knowing about. I would not plan around it changing.

All of this traces back to Surfside. After the 2021 collapse in Florida, which killed 98 people at a building that had deferred structural work, the agencies started treating a building's physical condition and its bank account as the same underwriting question. They are not wrong about that.

What your board should be doing this fall

This is the section I would forward to your board.

Find out which category your building is in. Two to four units? You qualify for the waiver outright, and most of this does not apply to you. Five to ten units and not part of a master association or larger development? Same answer. Eleven or more units, or five to ten inside a master association? You are in Full Review territory and the January date is yours.

Pull the budget and calculate the reserve percentage. Take the annual amount budgeted to reserves and divide it by total annual assessment income. If the answer is 15% or higher, you are in good shape on that item. If it is lower, you have a decision to make, and you have two options.

Option one: raise the reserve allocation. This usually means raising assessments, or reallocating within the existing budget if there is room. It is the simpler path and the less popular one.

Option two: get a reserve study and fund to it. A study inventories the building's components, projects what they will cost and when, and recommends a funding level. If your building funds at the highest level that study recommends, and the study is under three years old, that satisfies the requirement without the flat 15%.

If you go the reserve study route, start now. For a full study with an on-site inspection, providers generally describe a timeline of roughly 60 to 90 days from start to final report. A financial update to an existing study is faster, in the range of 30 to 45 days. Then your board still needs to adopt a budget that matches it. Working backward from January 4, a board that starts in late fall is cutting it close.

On cost, national providers describe a wide range for typical associations, commonly somewhere between about $1,200 and $7,500, with complex properties and high-rises running higher. I have not seen a reliable Chicago-specific number, so treat that as a ballpark and get real quotes. It is also worth putting next to the alternative: a study that costs a few thousand dollars is small relative to a special assessment, and it is the document that may keep your building financeable.

Check the master policy's per-unit deductible. If it is above $50,000, that is a conversation with your insurance broker, not something to discover during someone's sale.

Get the documents in order generally. Current financials, a documented repair history, minutes that actually record decisions, and someone who answers a lender's questionnaire in days rather than weeks. Full Review means a lender is going to ask for all of this on every single sale in your building. An association that can produce it quickly is an association where deals close on time.

Can a building get pre-approved by Fannie Mae?

Effectively yes, and this is worth knowing because most owners have never heard of it.

Fannie Mae runs something called the Project Eligibility Review Service, or PERS. It is a process for submitting a project to Fannie Mae directly for an eligibility determination rather than having each lender work it out on its own. Some projects are required to go through it. For others, including established projects, it is optional, and there is a streamlined submission path specifically for established projects. Fannie Mae reviews the package and issues a decision, and a project that receives Final Project Approval carries that status.

The catch, and it is a real one: only approved Fannie Mae seller/servicers can submit a project to PERS. Your association cannot file it directly. An association that wants to pursue this has to go through a Fannie Mae-approved lender rather than downloading a form. The process also takes weeks, and approvals expire.

There is a related tool called Condo Project Manager, or CPM, that gets described inaccurately in a lot of coverage. CPM is a lender tool. When a lender runs a Full Review, it enters the project data and certifies the project, which lets that lender make loans in the building. A lender's own certification is visible only to the lender that made it. It does not transfer to the next lender who shows up. The broader "Approved by Fannie Mae" status is different, and it comes from Fannie Mae's own review rather than from a lender submitting paperwork.

So the honest version is narrower than "get approved once and every future sale skips the review." But a building can pursue a Fannie Mae project approval through a lender, and short of that, a building can make itself fast and easy to certify. Both shorten your buyer's timeline.

Why this lands differently across Chicago's condo stock

The rules are national. What makes them worth your attention here is that Chicago's condo inventory contains very different kinds of building, and they will not experience this the same way.

Small conversions and walk-ups. The two-flat and three-flat conversions, the small vintage buildings carved up in the late nineties and early 2000s: many of these fall squarely inside the waiver. Two- to four-unit projects skip the deep review outright. Qualifying five- to ten-unit buildings do too. If you own in a small conversion, the review change probably works in your favor, and the January reserve percentage likely is not your problem.

Mid-size associations. Roughly twelve to sixty units, a volunteer board, a part-time management company or none at all, and assessments held flat for years because nobody wants to be the person who raises them. These buildings are big enough to require Full Review but often lack the professional support to produce documentation quickly.

They also carry Chicago's particular maintenance bill. Our vintage buildings need tuckpointing, which is replacing the deteriorated mortar between bricks. They need lintel replacement, the steel beams above windows and doors that rust and expand and crack the masonry around them. They need parapet work, the section of wall that extends above the roofline and takes the worst of the weather. Flat roofs need replacing. Rear porches, the wooden back staircases on thousands of Chicago buildings, have to meet code and eventually get rebuilt.

A major porch project on a mid-size building can easily reach six figures. It is also exactly the kind of item that gets discussed at a meeting, recorded in a line of the minutes, and then postponed for four years. Under Full Review, a lender now reads those minutes.

Older and larger buildings, including lakefront high-rises. Do not assume these are insulated because someone else runs them. Professional management does not mean good management. A large share of Chicago's high-rises were built between the 1950s and 1970s and are hitting the age where plumbing risers, elevators, roofs, and windows all come due at once. Reserve adequacy, insurance, litigation, and capital project exposure are underwriting questions in these buildings too, and the dollar figures are larger.

Condos above storefronts. Freddie Mac treats commercial space specifically, and this is a common Chicago building form. A two- to four-unit condo project can have no more than one commercial unit. A five- to ten-unit project that is part of a master association is capped at 35% commercial space, while a five- to ten-unit project not part of a master association has no commercial space requirement at all. If you own a residential unit over retail, the commercial component is a variable in your buyer's financing, and which rule applies depends on the unit count.

The Illinois wrinkle

Illinois lets condo associations opt out of reserves.

Under the Condominium Property Act, an association whose declaration does not itself require reserves can waive the statutory reserve requirement by a two-thirds vote of the owners. If it does, that waiver has to be disclosed, in bold, in the 22.1 disclosure furnished to a prospective purchaser.

Plenty of Chicago associations took that vote. It kept assessments down, owners liked it, and for years it was a line most buyers skimmed past.

Does that mean nobody can get a loan in those buildings now? No. The Illinois waiver and the lending standards are separate systems, and waiving reserves under state law does not violate any lending rule. What it does is make it more likely the building's budget falls below what a lender needs to see, because an association that voted to stop funding reserves usually is not budgeting 15% to them.

So a building that waived reserves is not automatically unfinanceable. It is a building whose board needs to look at the numbers and decide whether to fund reserves at the level lenders now expect, or to get a reserve study and fund to that, regardless of what the state lets them skip. If your association took that vote, this is the year to revisit it.

What sellers should be doing

Read your association's financials before you list. Not the formal 22.1 package, at least not yet. You want the budget, the most recent financial statement, the reserve study if one exists, and the last two years of meeting minutes. You can request those from your board or management company as an owner. Read them yourself, or bring them to me and we will read them together.

The reason for the distinction: the 22.1 disclosure is a transaction document and it needs to be current for the buyer and the lender. Ordering one months before you list means paying for it twice and handing over stale figures. What you want early is the underlying information, so you know whether there is a problem while you still have room to do something about it.

What to look for:

• The annual reserve allocation as a percentage of total assessment income. Under 15% is not automatically a failure. Find out whether there is a reserve study under three years old and whether the budget matches its highest recommended funding level.
• Any special assessment approved, pending, or under discussion.
• Any lawsuit involving the association.
• Deferred work you can see or that the minutes mention: masonry, roof, balconies, porches, elevators.
• The master policy's per-unit deductible.

Then ask your board what they plan to do about January. That conversation is uncomfortable and it is much better had in September than in February with a buyer waiting.

One piece of timing: the 15% standard applies to loan applications dated on or after January 4, 2027. If your building is thinly funded and you were already thinking about selling in the next several months, that date is worth a direct question to a lender before you set a listing date. Ask what standard a 2026 application would be evaluated against for your specific building, and whether that lender applies its own requirements on top of the agency rules. That is not a reason to panic-list. It is a reason to be deliberate about the calendar and to get the answer from someone who underwrites these files.

What buyers should take from this

Until August, a buyer making a larger down payment could often get through with the abbreviated project review, because the agencies treated a bigger equity cushion as offsetting some of the risk in the building itself. That trade no longer exists. The building gets examined regardless of what you put down.

Practically, that means the association's documents are on the critical path of your transaction now. I get as much information as I can before we write an offer, and a lot of it is available: the reserve balance, recent projects, discussed work, existing specials, and the rental percentage are things a listing agent can and should answer up front. Some of it will not surface until attorney review, when the full document package arrives. Both matter, and I would rather find a reserve problem on day four than on day twenty-eight.

The flip side is real: small buildings are easier now. If you have been looking at three-unit and six-unit conversions and getting mixed messages from lenders, the ground has shifted in your favor.

Some buildings will become difficult to finance conventionally. When conventional financing falls away, the pool of eligible buyers shrinks considerably, which affects marketability and negotiating leverage. That is not a forecast about the Chicago condo market. It is a specific risk attached to specific buildings, and it is knowable in advance by anyone willing to read the documents.

If you own in a building that has not looked closely at its budget in a few years, this is the fall to do it. The answer takes ten minutes to find and it determines a great deal about what happens when you sell.

Your list, if you own a Chicago condo

Everything above, in the order I would actually do it.

1. Count the units in your building. Two to four units qualifies for the waiver outright. Five to ten qualifies as long as your building is not part of a master association or larger development. Eleven or more, and the rest of this list matters to you.
2. Get your association's current budget. You are entitled to it as an owner. Email your board or management company.
3. Do one piece of arithmetic. Divide the annual amount budgeted to reserves by total annual assessment income. That percentage is the number this whole article is about.
4. Ask whether a reserve study exists and when it was done. Under three years old and funded at its highest recommended level is the alternative to the 15%.
5. Ask your board what the plan is for January. If the answer is that nobody has looked at it, you have just done your building a favor by asking.
6. Check the master policy's per-unit deductible. Above $50,000 is a problem to fix now, not during someone's sale.
7. Read the last two years of meeting minutes. Special assessments under discussion, deferred repairs, and litigation all show up there before they show up anywhere official.
8. If you are selling or refinancing in the next year, get ahead of it now. If you are selling, talk to your agent about the building's condition before you set a listing timeline. If you are refinancing, ask a lender how the new rules apply to your project.

None of that requires you to become an expert. It requires about an hour and a willingness to ask your board a direct question.

FAQ

Do these new rules apply to me if I already own and have a mortgage? Your existing loan is unaffected. They govern new loan applications, so they matter when someone buys in your building. The catch is that anything affecting your buyer's financing eventually affects your resale value, which is why owners should care even with no plans to move.

I'm already under contract. Does this affect my sale? It depends on when your buyer applied, not when you close. The new rules apply to loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026. An application dated before that can still close under the old process. Ask your buyer's lender for the application date if you are not sure.

My building has eight units. Does any of this apply to me? The biggest changes in this article mostly work in your favor. Buildings with two to four units skip project review outright, and five- to ten-unit buildings skip it as well, as long as yours is not part of a master association or a larger development. When review is waived, the lender does not analyze the association's finances or reserves, so the January 15% standard is not your deadline. Basic eligibility rules still apply, including insurance requirements and the master policy deductible cap, and an individual lender can always ask for more than the agencies require. But the two changes causing the most anxiety right now are largely not your problem.

Does this affect refinancing, or only buying? Both. These rules govern loan applications, and a refinance is a loan application. There are two exceptions worth knowing: a Fannie Mae to Fannie Mae limited cash-out refinance at 80% loan-to-value or less qualifies for a waiver, and so do high LTV refinance loans. If you are planning to refinance when rates move, your building's condition is part of that plan.

One person owns three units in our building. Is that a problem? It can be, and this is separate from the investor rule that was retired. Fannie Mae still limits a single entity to two units in a building of five to twenty units, or 20% of units in a building of 21 or more. Spouses count as one entity, and units the association owns and rents count too. It gets tested where the project is actually reviewed, and Freddie Mac has been more permissive on larger buildings, so ask a lender rather than assuming the answer either way.

Our reserves are under 15%. Are we in trouble in January? Not necessarily, and generally not if your building has ten or fewer units and qualifies for the project-review waiver. For buildings going through Full Review, the 15% budget allocation is one route. The other is a reserve study completed or updated within the last three years, with the budget funding at the highest level that study recommends. Ask your board which route it is taking.

Is it 15% of the budget, or 15% in the bank? Of the budget. Specifically, 15% of total annual budgeted assessment income going into reserves each year. It is not a required balance.

Will my assessments go up because of this? For a lot of buildings, probably. An association that has held assessments flat and funds reserves below 15% has to either raise them, reallocate the existing budget, or commission a reserve study and fund to it. Higher assessments are unpopular. A building nobody can get a conventional loan in is worse.

How long does a reserve study take, and what does it cost? Providers generally describe roughly 60 to 90 days for a full study with a site inspection, and 30 to 45 days for an update to an existing one. Cost varies with size and complexity, commonly in the range of a few thousand dollars for a typical association and more for a large or complex building. Get quotes rather than relying on a range, and if you are pursuing this to meet the January standard, start now rather than in December.

Can our building get pre-approved so every sale is easier? Sort of. Fannie Mae's Project Eligibility Review Service can issue a project approval, and there is a streamlined path for established projects, but only an approved lender can submit your building, and approvals expire. Short of that, the most useful thing a board can do is keep current financials, a reserve study, and repair records ready so any lender can complete a review quickly.

Our association voted years ago to waive reserves under Illinois law. Is that a problem? It does not violate any lending rule, because state law and lending standards are separate systems. But an association that stopped funding reserves is unlikely to meet the funding level lenders now expect, so it is worth revisiting that vote this year.

What is a 22.1 and when should I get one? It is the disclosure package Illinois requires the association to furnish to a prospective buyer on a resale: the declaration and bylaws, the account status for the unit, anticipated capital expenditures for the current and next two fiscal years, the reserve fund status, and the association's most recent financial statement. Order it for the transaction, when it needs to be current. Well before that, request the underlying budget, financials, and minutes as an owner so you know where you stand.

Can I still sell if my building does not meet the new standards? Yes, but the buyer pool narrows to cash, portfolio lenders, and in some cases FHA or VA depending on the building's approvals. A smaller pool affects marketability and your negotiating leverage, which is why finding out early matters more than it used to.

Should I be worried about buying a Chicago condo right now? No. You should be reading the association's financials, which you should have been doing anyway. The rules changed what happens when a building has been poorly run. They changed nothing about a building that has been well run.

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Sources: Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-2.1-02 (Waiver of Project Review), B4-2.1-03 (Ineligible Projects), B4-2.2-02 (Full Review Process), and B4-2.2-06 (PERS), as published August 5, 2026 via Announcement SEL-2026-07; Fannie Mae Condo Project Manager FAQs (July 2026) and Condo Project Standards FAQs (March 2026); Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 and Freddie Mac Bulletin 2026-C (March 18, 2026); Freddie Mac Guide Chapter 5701 and condominium unit mortgage FAQ; CAI advocacy summary, March 2026; NAR, "Why and How Condo Lending Rules Are Changing," Ken Fears, August 18, 2026; Axios Chicago, August 18, 2026; Illinois Condominium Property Act, 765 ILCS 605/9(c) and 605/22.1. Reserve study cost and timeline ranges are from national reserve study providers, not Chicago-specific data.