Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: FHA/FNMA project approval

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community, asked:

My current question relates to the need/utility of getting FHA approval (or VA,
FNMA, I don't know what else).  For a while, we pursued this for, I think, two
reasons:        1. ease of resale financing later
        2. easier to get conventional financing w/ project approved.
  Has anyone out there been through this process?  Any hints, war stories?




Yeah, we went through it.  For us it was really no big deal in that our 
attorney wrote up our condo declarations which had all the stuff which 
FMNA cares about.  We have had five separate banks give mortgages at 
this point - all because we were FMNA approved.  The paperwork for the 
application was handled by a bank, cost us like $1200, which we later 
got returned once we were approved, which was unexpected and was due to 
some policy change at the bank.  We never had to do anything other than 
give the bank a copy of our condo declarations and they handled it from 
there.  We got a letter about six weeks later stating that we were FMNA 
approved but no banks have ever asked for it, they have their own 
connections for that stuff I guess.

It has been awhile but I seem to recall that our attorney had some 
connection to the FMNA review board for our area, like a friend or 
associate or something which may be why we passed so easily.  We hired 
him because he was the best in our area, paid a pretty price for his 
services, but have had no legal hassles and actually because his 
reputation is good, it has helped us a few times just the fact that he 
drew up our legal stuff.  So I guess the moral to the story is it pays 
to hire a good attorney, even if she/he isn't into cohousing.