HOW TO BUY A CONDO USING FHA WITH ONLY 3.5% DOWN.

Questions like: How to buy a condo with bad credit? FHA low downpayment for homebuyers? Down payment assistance? No down payment first time home buyer?

New Financing Guidelines Opens Doors for Many More Buyers.

FHA (the Federal Housing Administration) just opened up the opportunity for buyers to purchase condos with as little as 3.5% down.  So this will allow people who want to get out of renting, people who have lower budgets, lower credit scores and higher debt to income ratios to be able to purchase a condo which is typically priced less than single-family homes.

Buyers used to need a minimum of 20% down to purchase a condominium. It also used to be that an entire condominium community had to be FHA approved in order for a buyer to be able to put down 3.5% for the purchase. This new program allows the FHA to approve condominium units individually.

Due to their lower average price point, condominiums are a vital source of affordable housing, particularly for first time home buyers entering the housing market. This change will make it possible for a much larger number of people to become homeowners. It will also help sellers of condos by opening up the opportunity to more buyers.

The condo must be your primary residence for this program. Some buyers steer away from condominiums because they feel the condominium monthly fees are high. But what people may not know is that the monthly condo fees include a lot of things that homeowners would pay for on their own separately if they owned a home not in a condo or homeowners association.

Things like insurance on the building, maintenance of the building and roof, water, sewer, cable, internet are all covered in that monthly fee. With condominiums and homeowners associations, you are buying these services in bulk at a discount. With most condominiums, you typically only pay for your electric.

On Wednesday, August 14, 2019, the Federal Housing Administration issued an update to its condominium rules, which go into effect October 15, 2019. The FHA said it expects the updates, which are intended to improve access to affordable and sustainable housing, will allow an estimated 20,000 to 60,000 more borrowers to qualify for condo loans.

Average Home Price In Jupiter Fl Jan 2019

Hi everybody. It's Thom Montrois with the Thom and Rory Team and Remax Properties here in Jupiter Florida. You know we're always getting asked how is the real estate market in the Jupiter area. So I thought this quick video would give you a sense of what's happening.  

So we have a couple of different stats for Jupiter. We have just the month of December in 2017 and 2018 and then we have the entire year of 2017 and 2018 so I'm really just going to focus on the entire year at this point.  So the closed sales we had went down 7.3 percent and the median sales price, that is half sold higher and half sold lower, that's actually up almost 9 percent. The average sales price is up almost 20%.

Jupiter Inventory Down

Our dollar volume is up 10.8 percent and the percentage of original list price received is holding steady right around 94 percent of this price is what sellers are getting. The median time to contract was actually down so it's taking a little bit less time to get them under contract.  The pending sales are down to 8.1 percent. The new listings, those are also down almost 10%.

You're probably hearing in the news that things may be shifting towards a buyers market.  Jupiter is a little bit different than the rest of the area. You're probably hearing that for Palm Beach County and possibly the state of Florida.

There's a lot of demand to be in Jupiter

We have low crime. We have great schools a lot of green space so we're just not seeing that buyer's market here yet. The demand is still high and there are not as many listings as we'd like to see. We have some buyers still waiting in the wings not finding the right house.

If we go down to the townhouse and condo market, the same stats, the closed sales, we're down 3.1 percent. The median sales price were up 9%, and the average sales price is up to 10%.  The dollar volume is up just a little bit more because townhomes and condos cost less than the single-family homes.  The percentage sales price received is still right around 94 percent. The median time to contract is down again 8.2 percent which is good. They're going under contract quicker because the demand is still there. Pending sales are down 7 percent and again new listings is down 2.2 percent.

We do have these stats for other areas, not just Jupiter. We all the other towns and cities for Palm Beach County. We also have some trends stats if you're interested in any of those areas, we'd be happy to share them with you. And always remember we're here for you if you just have real estate questions.

Thanks so much for watching.