Lending for condo purchases reached an annual rate of $74 billion as of November 2016, consisting of 8 percent of all purchase originations.
CoreLogic predicts that condos will become a bigger part of the mortgage origination market as an increasing number of first-time Millennial buyers and downsizing Baby Boomers start to consider condo ownership.
Around 600,000 condos were sold in the first half of 2016, with an average sales price of $300,000.
Lenders, condo owners and borrowers all got some good news last year when Congress acted to ease rules that have made FHA condo loans more difficult to get. Specifically the new rules lowered the owner-occupancy threshold from 50 percent to 35 and made other changes to bring FHA policies in line with the less-restrictive approach used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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