Trendy neighborhoods in the District and close-in suburbs may be blossoming, but if you’re trying to resell your condominium apartment in much of the Washington area, you’ll probably find it to be another chilly spring.
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There is activity, but some of it bears the mark of scavengers. Real estate agents say investors — and some buyers’ parents— are paying cash to snag deals at depressed prices. Investors are searching for diamonds in the rough in hot markets as well as in areas more burdened by foreclosures and short sales.
Suzanne Des Marais, president of the D.C. Association of Realtors and an associate broker with Urban Pace, said all-cash purchases are occurring more often. “In the last six months, I’ve had two deals where parents paid all-cash for their children’s units,” she said. But the all-cash deals are one sign of how difficult it is for buyers to get mortgage approval for a condominium.
Agent Katie Wethman of Keller Williams Realty in McLean, said lenders’ restrictions and confusion over federal mortgage programs have affected the market. “It’s so hard to get financing these days that I haven’t had anyone buying in the last two years,” she said in mid-March, even though recently one buyer was “ready to make an offer” after her seller dropped the price.
Scars from the recession
A legal glitch at the Federal Housing Administration this year scuttled some sales. Since the housing collapse, the FHA has worked to tighten its rules, moving in 2009 to a process that requires that condo buildings meet certain standards before it will approve a low-cost loan for individual buyers.
The interruption killed some condo deals, said Andrew Fortin, vice president for government and public affairs at the Community Associations Institute, which represents condo and homeowner associations. Buyers who couldn’t get FHA loans because a building was rejected or put on hold “won’t be coming back to that unit,” Fortin said. “It’s too late for that seller.”
The FHA’s formal rule-making on building approvals will be done this year, FHA officials said. However, Fortin’s group maintains that the FHA process and its rules are “causing confusion” and harming the market even though the agency’s intent — to protect against the loose lending that led to the housing market’s fall — was “understandable.”
The rules imposed by the FHA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are critical because the three agencies represent about 90 percent of home lending after private lenders ran from the market. Private lenders now routinely require 20 to 50 percent down payments, plus strong credit scores. The FHA requires only 3.5 percent down.
The FHA’s rules are a challenge for some buildings. It requires that no more than half of a condo building’s units can be rented out and no more than 25 percent of the space can be commercial — a problem for new buildings with ground-floor retail. Condo buildings also can be rejected because of insufficient reserves; significant pending litigation; bankruptcy/receivership or other types of financial issues; and insufficient fidelity bond insurance coverage.
Although some buildings are proceeding to certification after the embargo was lifted, those in the Washington area with too many renters face compounded problems under the FHA rules, said Joanne Darling, president of the Prince George’s County Association of Realtors. “If people can’t sell, they’re renting them out,” she said. That further boosts the percentage of renters, exacerbating the problem.
The situation for sellers is “just awful,” said Ellen Krouss, a potential seller who has been working with Wethman. Krouss has been waiting a year to list her Kalorama condo because of the uncertainty over the FHA rules and her fear that her building has too many renters to win FHA approval.
She bought the one-bedroom unit in 2007 but got married last April and needs more space. “I would like to move out, but I don’t want to rent because I don’t want to be a landlord and because it would enable the problem” the building already has with excessive renters, she says. Last month, Wethman was looking into the possibility that a private lender might be willing to keep any loan offered for the unit in its portfolio, rather than selling it to Fannie or Freddie, eliminating the need to comply with a ceiling on renters.
The FHA cap on renters is particularly problematic in Foggy Bottom, says Long & Foster agent Tom Murphy, because “about 20 percent of the owners are job holders in organizations that rotate postings. They work for the State Department, the World Bank, or they’re university professors who go on sabbatical.?.?.?. Once they walk out the door, they’re investors.”
Fourteen of 20 high-rise buildings in Foggy Bottom have too many renters to qualify for the FHA, Murphy estimates. He says some Dupont Circle buildings also can’t get certification.
The FHA restrictions also limit the percentage of owners who can be more than 30 days delinquent on condo fees. But if sellers can’t sell and can’t find enough income to pay their condo dues, the buildings will flunk that FHA test, too, agents noted.
“The biggest problem we have is delinquencies,” said Stephen Bupp, president of CVI, a property management company in Columbia. CVI manages 24 communities in Prince George’s and Howard counties with 10,500 homes, about half of which are condos. “The amount [of money owed in dues] is staggering, compared to all previous years” since he started business in 1975, Bupp says. He noted that all of his buildings have FHA approval.