Number of Mass. condo developments on Fannie Mae blacklist triples

In one year, the Fannie Mae secret blacklist of condo developments nearly doubled, and part of that surge can be attributed to the rising cost of insurance premiums.

In Massachusetts alone, the number of blacklisted properties more than tripled.

There were 74 Massachusetts developments on the blacklist on May 29, up 222 percent from 23 in May 2023. Other New England states also saw an increase:

In May 2023, the blacklist contained 1,770 US developments totaling 313,840 units. Last May, the list had nearly doubled to 3,349 developments, totaling 588,466 units ineligible for the popular mortgage program aimed at lower-income buyers.

Homeowner’s associations and condo boards still aren’t being told they are on the list. Most find out only when unit owners list their properties and the deals fall through because Fannie Mae, short for the Federal National Mortgage Association, excludes them from their low-cost loans. Others are flocking to websites like CondoBlacklist.com. In December 2023, Fannie Mae promised to make its list public by late 2024.

Jim Toscano owns Property Management of Andover. He checked to see whether any of the properties he manages were on the blacklist in February and was relieved to find they weren’t. He was surprised when the Globe reached out to him earlier this month and told him a development he manages, Indian Ridge Condominiums in Tewksbury, had been blacklisted in April.

When a unit there was being sold in May, the buyer tried to use a Fannie Mae-eligible loan and got denied because of the excessive deductible. When Toscano was told, he reached out to his insurance company.

“We have one of the lowest deductibles you can have, which is $10,000 per home for water-related damages,” he said. “We have almost 300 homes in 23 buildings on 48 acres. I’m going to have a broken pipe or an ice dam affect 300 homes? In 2015, everyone had ice dams, we had about 17 ice dam problems, but even that didn’t affect every unit.”

So he asked his insurance company what could be done. His agent asked the carrier, and the carrier wrote an addendum to Indian Ridge’s property insurance policy that included language to the effect that in the event there is such a claim, it will lower the amount of deductible to meet Fannie Mae’s requirement. He said the unit was then sold.

“If I come across this in the future with any other property we manage, what will happen is any time an underwriter or an agent calls about insurance, they’ll get that addendum directly from the agency and that will solve the problem,” he said. “Because they don’t tell you how to get off the list.”

In a September 2023 email to the Globe, a Fannie Mae spokesperson wrote, “We encourage HOAs and lenders to provide sufficient documentation to Fannie Mae when eligibility issues