The immediate-notification duty on the lender

SEL-2025-05 also told lenders not to wait for the implementation date: “if the lender becomes aware of any of these actions prior to the required implementation date, it must apply the new policy immediately and notify Fannie Mae's Project Standards team within five business days.”

So the information travels. A lender that learns of a termination vote reports it, and the project's status changes in the enterprise's own systems.

What else makes a project ineligible

The same Selling Guide topic carries the critical-repairs rule, and it has a dollar trigger a board can measure itself against:

“Critical repairs include conditions such as: material deficiencies, which if left uncorrected, have the potential to result in or contribute to critical element or system failure within one year; any mold, water intrusions or potentially damaging leaks to the project's building(s); advanced physical deterioration; any project that failed to pass state, county, or other jurisdictional mandatory inspections or certifications specific to structural safety, soundness, and habitability; or any unfunded repairs costing more than $10,000 per unit that should be undertaken within the next 12 months (does not include repairs made by the unit owner or repairs funded through a special assessment).”

Two exclusions in that parenthesis are worth reading twice. Repairs an owner makes do not count. Repairs funded through a special assessment do not count — which means an association facing a large unfunded repair can move itself out of the critical-repairs trap by actually adopting a special assessment for it.

But then the special assessment gets its own examination: “If the special assessment is associated with a critical repair and the issue is not remediated, the project is ineligible.” Adopting the assessment is not enough. The work has to be done.

And the inspection rule: “If a structural and/or mechanical inspection was completed within 3 years of the lender's project review date, the lender must obtain and review the inspection report. The report cannot indicate that any critical repairs are needed, no evacuation orders are in effect, and no regulatory actions are required.”

Our North Dakota condo safety inspections page covers what the state itself requires, which is very little — though North Dakota's new conveyance statute now pulls association-owned elevators into a registration and annual certificate regime, with witnessed acceptance tests phasing in from August 2026.

How a board can check its own status

Fannie Mae operates a free, association-facing lookup, the Condo Status Finder:

“Fannie Mae's Condo Status Finder is a free, online tool to help homeowner associations (HOAs), their management companies, and authorized advisors understand their condo project's status.”²

It returns one of four results: “No findings — We have found the project record, and the project is not currently identified as ineligible. This does not mean that the project has been reviewed or approved by Fannie Mae”; “Ineligible conditions”; “No project”; or “Multiple projects found.” Registration is required, and users must identify their role in the association.

Read the first result carefully. “No findings” is not approval. It is the absence of a recorded problem.

The status itself lives in Condo Project Manager and Desktop Underwriter, and the consequence is blunt: “Loans secured by units in projects with a status of 'Unavailable' in Condo Project Manager (CPM) or on the DU Underwriting Findings report are ineligible for purchase by Fannie Mae.” Freddie Mac's parallel rule: “Sellers must not deliver a mortgage secured by a condominium unit in a condominium project with a Not Eligible status.”

Where a North Dakota board stands

Check your status now, not when a sale is pending. The lookup is free and takes minutes. If it returns ineligible conditions, you want months to work on it.

Before you put termination or deconversion to a vote, understand what the vote itself does. Owners who intend to vote against it will discover their units are unfinanceable while the question is open. That is a fact available before the meeting is called, not after.

Watch the receivership overlap. North Dakota's new Uniform Commercial Real Estate Receivership Act, effective August 1, 2025, applies to residential property of five or more dwelling units. A receivership over a developer's or a bulk owner's interest in a five-plus-unit North Dakota project is a state-law receivership proceeding, and lenders will ask what it means for the project.

Fund or complete critical repairs, do not just plan them. Unfunded repairs above $10,000 per unit due within twelve months are the trigger; a special assessment removes them from the count only if the work actually gets remediated. Our reserve studies page covers planning for them in advance.

What to watch next

Watch whether North Dakota's first condominium deconversion attempt runs into this rule — it is the fact pattern the rule was written for, and the consequences land on owners who had no say. Watch too for the Condo Status Finder to become a standard item in a resale packet, since North Dakota associations already have to produce the underlying financial documents within ten days.