Geography-specific selling rules<\/a> in place since 2008 require anyone buying a condominium in Florida to pay 25% of the value of the home upfront, with loans only able to cover 75% of the costs. For most of the country, buyers only need to pay a 10% down payment, with loans covering up to 90% of the rest of the purchase price.<\/p>\n Donalds said he had received \u201csignificant outreach\u201d in Florida over the matter.<\/p>\n \u201cFor 17 years, this policy has only applied to Florida and has negatively impacted condominium owners throughout my state,\u201d Donalds said.<\/p>\n Donalds urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to review the regulation. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner committed to doing just that.<\/p>\n \u201cI will make sure that we work very closely with our partners at FHFA to make sure that Florida residents, as it pertains to your issue, are being treated appropriately and fairly in this issue,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n Of note, the FHFA right now is headed<\/a> by Bill Pulte, a Boca Raton private equity firm founder appointed by President Donald Trump to head the agency last year. That agency oversees Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which collectively provide more than $8.5 trillion in funding for U.S. mortgage markets and financial institutions.<\/p>\n The extra provision on condo purchases in Florida came down in 2008, at the dawn of the Great Recession, when a housing bubble burst and Florida was largely at its epicenter.<\/p>\n Real estate professionals, particularly those in high-rise heavy South Florida, have fought for a change in the rule for years. Danielle Blake, of the Miami Association of Realtors, recently told Mortgage Professional America<\/a> that the federal agency for years pointed at the real estate owned inventory, or the high number of units in the market owned by banks or government agencies.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went back and proved that South Florida\u2019s inventory was in second place compared to Las Vegas at the time,\u201d Blake told the trade publication. \u201cBut this law, this provision, the geotargeting, didn\u2019t apply to condos in Nevada.\u201d<\/p>\n While the FHFA has yet to clarify exactly what changes will come, experts praised Donalds for securing a promise from the administration to change the rule.<\/p>\n Sean Stafford, a lobbyist for the Florida Association of Mortgage Professionals, said the burden on buyers has contributed to an affordability crisis in Florida. And he said whatever reasoning drove the creation of the 2008 rule should by now be considered history. If the state once represented a greater system risk to the condo market, that has changed.<\/p>\n He noted that Florida has passed stronger rules regarding the upkeep of condominium buildings, particularly in the wake of the Champlain Towers South condo building collapse in Surfside<\/a> in 2021. Gov. Ron DeSantis since then has signed<\/a> multiple laws both requiring upkeep of the laws and providing funding relief for owners and associations.<\/p>\n \u201cOther states are in way worse shape than Florida,\u201d Stafford said. \u201cIt\u2019s a silly and outdated rule that just hasn\u2019t been revisited in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n He said real estates have lobbied federal lawmakers and administrations for years on finding relief and found bipartisan support for reform. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t until Byron Donalds got involved that people got it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Donalds represents a large portion of Southwest Florida, including waterfront communities in Lee and Collier counties with a high number of condominium developments. He also has Trump\u2019s endorsement in the race for Governor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds secured commitment from the administration to review a requirement keeping condominium down payments in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64111,445,64112,409,64113,28,64114,30,29,3531,64115],"class_list":["post-130022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-bill-oute","tag-byron-donalds","tag-danielle-blake","tag-donald-trump","tag-federal-housing-finance-agency","tag-florida","tag-florida-association-of-mortgage-professionals","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-miami-association-of-realtors","tag-scott-turner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/PMI_IIA_Static_728x90_V1_1.png\")
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