Call it a housing policy head fake — one with potentially painful consequences for moderate-income buyers, sellers and seniors in hundreds of condominium projects around the country. If you were thinking about purchasing a condo unit with a low-down-payment Federal Housing Administration mortgage in the coming year, this could affect you.
Last week, ostensibly yielding to a congressional mandate to make consumer-friendly FHA mortgages more widely available in condominiums, the government announced a move to do precisely that: Starting immediately, projects with fewer than half of their units occupied by owners may be eligible for certification for FHA financing. Under “certain circumstances,” the government said, projects with as low as 35 percent owner occupancy might now be eligible.