When a condominium or townhome project is listed as “VA approved,” it means that every individually-owned condo unit in the building or townhome within the project meets the VA’s approval for financing. Hawaii VA Loans offers an easy Condo Check Tool that will immediately let you know if the condo that catches your eye to buy is VA approved. Simply enter the name of the condo building/project and voila! You’ll have your answer. See the demo below:

https://cl.ly/2z210r1u051o

Once in awhile, Hawaii VA Loans customers will come across a condo that is VA approved, but it is “Approved with Conditions.”

In such cases, the VA will allow a VA home loan on the condo building as long as the party involved in the transaction can satisfy specific conditions that the VA would identify on a condo-by-condo basis.

Examples of CONDITIONS could be:

  • There is some sort of minor litigation on the building. This is a common scenario. A typical condition would be the VA requiring the home buyer (veteran) and lender to acknowledge that they are aware of the problem along with the understanding that there may be a special assessment or rate increase to the maintenance fee.
  • New construction presale requirements – an x amount % of units must be pre-sold prior to VA being an option to finance
  • Insufficient parking stalls compared to the number of units in the building
  • When buying a leasehold condo unit, the veteran has to purchase the Fee due to the lease not conforming to VA’s standards. There are a number of buildings in Hawaii that contain both “leasehold” and “fee simple” units. The VA has specific lease requirements, so if the leases in the building do not meet those requirements, the VA may require that units be purchased in fee simple tenure.

What is required of the Veteran home buyer under most conditions?

The Veteran will need to sign an acknowledgment indicating they understand the “condition” and agree to move forward. This assures the VA that the veteran is agreeing to proceed with “eyes wide open.”

Senior VA Loan Specialist, Brenda Carr, explains that it is the VA’s job to protect the Veteran in all cases:

“The VA wants to make sure that veteran is fully aware of anything out of the ordinary pertaining to a Condo Association. The VA is also protecting the veteran from any possible issues when they go to sell or especially, any additional unforeseen out-of-pocket expenses that might result from one of these conditions.”

As Hawaii’s longest running VA loan specialized lender, we aim to make all aspects of your VA home purchase simple and smooth. Give us a call at 808-792-4251 to find out more about using your VA home loan benefits in Hawaii or fill out our short, online loan application.