Due North · the deadline isn't the deadline

Due North ▲ The Florida Landlord Brief — a weekly read on Florida rentals, from True North Managed · Orlando & Tampa.

Hi again — this week's main item is condo financing, and the date everyone is quoting is the wrong thing to watch. If you're all single-family, here's your line first: price your renewals against effective rent, not asking rent, because more than half of Orlando and Tampa listings now carry a concession. There's more on that below. Condo owners — and anyone eyeing one because the prices finally look interesting — the next part is yours.

Here's the part being reported: on August 3, Freddie Mac retires what it calls Streamlined Review, the shortcut that let an established condo project skip the full project review. Fannie Mae retires its equivalent, Limited Review, on the same schedule, in consultation with their regulator. After that an established project has to clear the full Established Projects review, or one of two narrower routes — a reciprocal review, or an outright exemption for projects of ten units or fewer. The shortcut that carried most of them is gone.

And here's the part that isn't being reported, straight out of Freddie Mac's own bulletin: the change is effective for applications received on or after August 3, "but Sellers may implement immediately." That single clause undoes the deadline. Lenders have been free to switch since the bulletin came out in March, and some have. There is no grace period you're entitled to, and "I have until August 3" is not a thing anyone can promise you.

So the move this week isn't to beat a date. It's one phone call: ask your lender which rules they are applying today, on an application submitted this week. And if you already have a file in process, that's the second question — ask whether it's locked under the rules that applied when you submitted it. Right now the answers genuinely differ by lender.

If you're managing from out of state, that call is also the cheapest way to learn something you can't see from where you are. Because the rule that will actually decide whether your condo can be sold or refinanced isn't the review change — it's the reserve requirement landing the same day. From August 3, the association's budget has to fund the highest recommended allocation in its reserve study, and it can't get there using what the bulletin calls a baseline funding method: funding reserves just enough that the balance drifts toward zero without quite touching it. That's how a great many associations have always done it. On January 4, 2027, the minimum allocation for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance goes from 10% to 15% of annual budgeted assessment income. An association forced to fund that number is an association whose assessments are going up, so underwrite next year's fee rather than this year's — and if you already own, expect the increase before you expect the loan.

Which means the reserve study, not the appraisal, is the document that decides your condo's financeability. Florida owners have an odd advantage here: any association whose building runs three or more habitable stories already has to produce a structural integrity reserve study, so for most condos the number exists in writing. Ask for the current reserve study, the current budget, and the master policy declarations page — by email, from wherever you happen to live.

Then know what you're looking for, because a reserve study is long and most of it won't matter to you. In the study: the highest recommended annual allocation. In the budget: whether that's what's actually being funded. On the declarations page: the named-storm deductible as a percentage of building coverage. Those three answers tell you whether the building is financeable before a buyer's lender does.

If you already own the unit, put that request in writing rather than emailing casually — Florida gives owners a records right that runs off a written request: ten working days, then a rebuttable presumption the association willfully failed — $50 a day for up to ten days, plus attorney fees if you have to enforce it. If you're still shopping you don't have that right yet, and the documents come through the seller — one who can't produce them is telling you something.

One more, and it's good news I haven't seen reported anywhere. Freddie has retired the 50% owner-occupancy requirement for established condo projects — specifically for investment-property loans. For years an investor buying into a building that had tipped majority-renter couldn't get an agency loan on it, which is why some perfectly sound Florida condos have traded cash-only. That test is no longer checked on an established project. If you walked away from an investor-heavy building because the financing wouldn't come together, that answer may have changed — though new projects are a different animal, and presale requirements still apply there.

One caution before you go looking: the lender's rules and the association's rules are two separate gates. Plenty of Florida declarations cap how many units may be leased, run a waiting list, or make you own a year before renting at all — and a building that tipped majority-renter is often exactly the one that has since adopted a cap. Read the leasing article in the declaration before you read the loan terms.

Now the part for everyone, condo or not.

Price your renewals against effective rent, not asking rent. Concessions aren't a rounding error anymore — Zillow's June numbers put 55.2% of Orlando listings and 52.5% of Tampa's on some kind of concession, against 39.7% nationally. Orlando has been the softer of the two for months — 54.8% against Tampa's 50.5% in May, and 53.4% against 50.4% back in April — not the story the market commentary tells. Most of those listings are apartments, and an apartment isn't a comp for your house; it is what your tenant is pricing you against. Two months free on a twelve-month lease is roughly a 17% cut to what they actually pay. So pull recent signed comps before you set a renewal — our renewal playbook walks the arithmetic. Listing sites show asks, and in this market asks are fiction.

Rates are the smaller of your two financing problems right now — 6.58% on July 23, up for a third straight week from 6.43% at the start of the month. Eligibility is the one killing deals this month.

A few more worth your time. If the condo item landed, our guide to the HOA risks that actually sink a condo deal and our breakdown of how special assessments get decided and who pays are the two to read next — both are really about the same balance sheet the lenders are now reading. This month's Tampa market update has the ZIP-level split between where rent held and where it didn't, which is the closest thing to a map of the concession problem. And if you own near MacDill, Florida's Homes for Veterans program started July 1 — a four-county pilot with Hillsborough in it, covering up to 45 days of held-vacant rent and up to $2,000 in damage.

If you're doing all of this from another state, the reserve study and the declarations page are exactly the things a manager on the ground should be pulling and reading for you before they become a closing problem. That's a fair share of what we actually handle — the paperwork you can't chase from 1,000 miles away.

One call to your lender, one written request to the association. Both can happen before Friday.

— The True North Team

General info for Florida rental owners — not legal, tax, or insurance advice.