> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://truenorthboulder.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Selling a Boulder Townhome to Buy a House: What to Pull - URL: https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/selling-a-boulder-townhome-to-buy-a-house/ - Published: 2026-09-22T09:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-03T19:29:51.000Z - Description: When you sell a Boulder townhome to buy a house, your buyer's lender reviews the borrower and, if what you own is legally a condominium, the project too. That standard changed for loan applications dated on or after 3 August 2026. What to pull before you list, and the three moves open to you. - Author: Daniel Hsieh - Tags: Move-Up Guide, Move-Up, Selling You own a Boulder townhome and you want a house. That's one decision and two transactions, and the two legs don't carry the same kind of risk. On the buy side you are a borrower, and a lender looks at you. On the sell side your buyer is the borrower, and their lender looks at your buyer and, if what you own is legally a condominium, at the organization whose dues you have been paying for years. That second review has a calendar. It started running in August. ## Your buyer is not the only one being underwritten The quick answer When the home securing a loan is a unit in a condominium project, the lender reviews the project alongside the borrower. So a Boulder sale can stop on a document you didn’t write and can’t amend: the association’s adopted budget. The seller most exposed to that is a move-up seller, whose purchase is funded by the sale. When a lender finances an attached home, the borrower is not the only party being examined. If the unit sits in a condominium project, the lender also forms a view about the project itself: its budget, its reserves, its insurance, whether it is in litigation. Your buyer can be immaculate and the loan can still fail, because what failed wasn't your buyer. That's an odd sentence to read as a seller, so hold onto the consequence rather than the mechanism. You've been paying dues to an organization whose paperwork you've probably never read. The day you list, that organization becomes a counterparty in your closing. Now couple it to the second transaction. In a move-up the sale funds the purchase and the proceeds are the down payment, so the two legs are joined at the money. [What a move-up actually takes in equity](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/move-up-equity-position-boulder/) works that number properly. Which means a review of your association's balance sheet lands on the house you are trying to buy, and it lands in underwriting, weeks after you've signed both contracts. We've written about the other third party who can do this to you. In [a low appraisal on the house you are selling](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/appraisal-gap-move-up-boulder/), an appraiser hired by your buyer's lender re-prices your home after both contracts already exist, and the contract runs the appraisal rights to the buyer. This exposure runs the other way. The appraiser doesn't exist until your buyer orders one, and by then there's nothing upstream left to do. The association exists now. Its budget exists now. You could read it this afternoon. It is also not the same problem as [selling a home in a metro district](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/selling-in-a-metro-district-colorado/), where a district's mill lands inside your buyer's monthly housing expense and breaks their debt-to-income ratio. That's a borrower problem, and borrower problems have borrower solutions: more money down, a permanent buydown, a different buyer. A project that misses a lender's standard is not fixed by finding a stronger buyer. Another buyer bringing a conventional loan reviewed against the same standard gets the same answer, which is why the useful question is about the financing, not the buyer. A buyer holding [a Colorado tax certificate that names metro districts](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/colorado-tax-certificate-termination/) faces the same question pointed at a district: once it's on paper, who can actually change it? ## Not every townhome is a condominium, and your deed settles which one you own The quick answer Ask one question before you read any further: is the home you own legally a condominium, or a lot in a planned unit development? Fannie Mae waives project review for units in new and established PUD projects, subject to named exceptions, and the replacement-reserve test does not reach them. What your listing calls a townhome doesn’t settle it. Your deed does. "Townhome" describes a building, not a form of ownership. Two homes that look identical from the sidewalk can be held two different ways, and the difference sits on your deed and in the recorded declaration rather than in a listing description. In a condominium you own your unit together with an undivided share of the common elements, and there is a legal entity, the project, that a lender can review. In a planned unit development you own your lot and the structure on it, an owners association owns and maintains the common areas, and membership attaches to the lot automatically. Fannie Mae waives project review for units in new and established PUD projects, subject to named exceptions, but its own eligibility section for PUD units keeps real conditions in place. So it is not an exemption. It is a limit on reach: the reserve test in the next section does not reach a PUD unit. Settle this first Before you read a word about reserves, find out which one you own, because the answer decides whether the rest of this page is about you at all. You can usually settle it yourself in a minute. Pull your deed and read the legal description: a condominium names a unit and a recorded condominium map; a planned unit development names a lot, a block and a filing. The listing description and what the neighbors call the building don’t settle it. If the description is ambiguous, or the declaration says something the deed doesn’t, that is the point to ask a title officer. If the answer is condominium, keep reading. How a lender runs the calculation itself is not something to learn from a web page. The project's status in their database, the ratios, the legal test: that is the short list to put to a lender who does project review. ## Two dates that decide which rulebook your buyer gets The quick answer Two dates. For loan applications dated on or after 3 August 2026, Fannie Mae retired the Limited Review process, so an established condominium project that used to clear the short review is reviewed under Full Review instead, unless the project falls inside one of the waivers. For applications dated on or after 4 January 2027, the replacement-reserve minimum inside that review rises from 10 percent to 15 percent. Full Review is the long version, and one line in it does most of the work for a seller. The lender reads the association's adopted budget and checks that it funds replacement reserves for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance at what the Guide calls "at least 10% of the budget." A lender may rely on a qualifying reserve study instead of running that calculation, and since August the budget has had to include the highest recommended reserve allocation from that study. __Fannie Mae project review, on the two dates a Boulder seller has to think about. Selling Guide B4-2.2-01 (Full Review Process) and B4-2.1-02 (Waiver of Project Review). General information, not legal or lending advice.__ | Loan applications dated | What the buyer’s lender does | Where it lands on a seller | | -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | On or after 3 August 2026 | Reviews an established condo project under the Full Review process, unless a waiver applies. Limited Review is retired | A project that cleared the short review before can now go through the long one | | Today, inside Full Review | Checks that the adopted budget funds replacement reserves at what the Guide calls **“at least 10% of the budget”**, or relies on a qualifying reserve study instead | A number in your association’s budget, adopted by a board, that you did not vote on line by line | | On or after 4 January 2027 | Applies a **15 percent** minimum in place of 10 | A budget that clears this autumn can miss in January without one figure in it changing | Read the left column again, because it's the reason this piece exists. The change keys on when your buyer applies for their loan, which is not the day you list and not the day you close. ![A dated calendar from June 2026 to March 2027 with two fixed vertical thresholds at 3 August 2026 and 4 January 2027. A replacement-reserve floor line runs at 10 percent of the budget between them and steps up to 15 percent after January. A seller’s transaction bar runs beneath, ending at the accepted contract, while the buyer’s loan-application marker falls past both the bar’s end and the January threshold.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7c/ec/7cec6ddd-8aeb-4e8c-923a-e353e04b082d/content/images/2026/09/selling-a-boulder-townhome-to-buy-a-house-infographic.png) **A calendar from June 2026 to March 2027 carrying two fixed thresholds.** For loan applications dated on or after **3 August 2026**, Fannie Mae retired the Limited Review process, so an established condominium project is reviewed under Full Review unless a waiver applies; inside that review the association’s adopted budget must fund replacement reserves at what the Selling Guide calls “**at least 10% of the budget**”, or a lender may rely on a qualifying reserve study. For applications dated on or after **4 January 2027** that minimum rises to **15%**. The standard keys on the date your buyer *applies* for their loan — not the day you list and not the day you close — so the seller’s span, from listing to accepted contract, ends before the date that decides which rulebook applies. Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-2.2-01 (Full Review Process) and B4-2.1-02 (Waiver of Project Review). Project review is waived for units in PUD projects, subject to named exceptions. The transaction drawn is an illustrative placement carrying no dates of its own; only the two thresholds are fixed. General information, not legal or lending advice. You don't pick that date, but you are not absent from it either. Colorado's contract carries a New Loan Application Deadline in the Dates and Deadlines table, and your buyer covenants to apply on or before it. It is negotiated, like every other date on that page. If you are trading in November or December and you want your buyer reviewed under today's floor, that deadline is where the question gets decided, not the closing date. [The deadlines that do most of the damage](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/colorado-contract-deadlines-boulder/) walks how those rows work. The application deadline is not among the ten it covers, so ask your broker to show you that row on the form itself. Two limits belong with that, and they are why it's a lever rather than a guarantee. The obligation runs where the buyer's lender requires an application, and a buyer paying cash makes none at all. There are real exits here, and they aren't footnotes. Fannie Mae expanded its waiver of project review to new and established projects with ten or fewer units, on conditions that differ with the size of the project and whether it sits inside a larger development. Small buildings are ordinary in this town, so it is worth asking rather than assuming the long review applies to you. And a current reserve study, funded at the level the study itself recommends, is a documented route through the review rather than a way around it. The honest take Nothing here is a claim about your building. Attached homes in this town trade all the time without anyone saying the words “replacement reserve” out loud. The claim is narrower, and it is about sequence: the one document that would tell you either way is obtainable and cheap, and it is rarely pulled until a buyer’s underwriter pulls it, by which point it has stopped being yours to do anything about. All of this is Fannie Mae's standard. Which investor's rules govern a particular loan, and which application date that investor treats as the trigger, are fair questions to put to your buyer's lender before you accept an offer. ## Why the published attached numbers won't settle your list price The quick answer $500,000 in July and $375,000 in August are the same market, a month apart. Boulder’s attached homes sold at a month median of $500,000 in July 2026, above $458,630 a year earlier, and $375,000 in August, below $433,500 a year earlier, while the year-to-date median sat at $517,000 through August against $535,000 last year. One month points up and the next points down, and we aren’t turning either into a percentage. You'll want a number for what your townhome is worth, and this is where the published figures stop being much help. Across 2026 to date through August, Boulder's attached homes, meaning townhouses and condominiums, sold at a median of $517,000, against $535,000 over the same stretch of 2025\. The single months move far more. In July the report read $500,000 against $458,630 a year earlier; in August, $375,000 against $433,500\. One month points up and the next points down. Neither becomes a percentage here, and the reason isn't that the numbers are missing. A median is a ranking, not a valuation: it reports which sale landed in the middle, so it shifts when the composition of the month shifts, whether or not any home changed in value. Testing whether a segment has actually appreciated takes an index that follows the same homes through repeat sales, not a town-wide median read twice. Two consecutive months pointing opposite ways is what that looks like from outside. It is why [the numbers we will not print](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/the-numbers-we-will-not-print-about-this-market/) treats a wide spread as a finding in its own right rather than something to average, and why [how a real list price gets built](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/how-to-price-a-boulder-home/) leans its trend sentences on the year-to-date figure rather than a single month. The asymmetry is worth noticing while you are planning a trade, because it runs against you on both sides. On the side you are buying into, the same report shows 595 single-family sales year to date through August and 62 in the month, and [that thicker market](https://truenorthboulder.com/boulder/living-in-boulder/) is the one you will be competing in. On the side you're selling, the same report shows 260 attached sales year to date and 25 in August. Both are real samples, and the thinner one is the side your list price has to come from. That is worth remembering if someone quotes you a confident number off those published figures, too: it is the same thin sample, read with more assurance. About this data, and the rate we are not printing Attached figures are Boulder townhouse and condominium median *sold* prices from the CAR Local Market Update (IRES data), August 2026 release (with the July month figure from the July release), on the two bases the report itself publishes: year to date, and the single month. The single-family figures come from the same release, as do the sale counts behind the attached medians: 260 year to date through August 2026 and 25 for the month of August. We are publishing levels and no year-over-year rate. The report also notes that its price figures do not account for seller concessions or down-payment assistance. And there is deliberately no estimate of what any particular home is worth anywhere on this site: a figure produced without seeing the unit is the thing this section is arguing against. What actually answers it isn’t a town-wide median at all. Attached homes come with the closest thing to a true comparable: the same floorplan has often sold in your own complex inside the last year or two. That is a smaller, better number than anything published for the segment, and it is the one your list price gets built from. ## Find out now, then decide: watch the budget cycle, price to the pool, or beat the January date The quick answer The whole decision runs off one file. Get the current adopted budget, the most recent reserve study with its date, the master insurance certificate, a year of board minutes, and anything pending by way of a special assessment or litigation. What comes back sorts you into one of three moves: watch the budget cycle, price to the pool, or beat the January date. A word on how to ask, because the obvious version of this doesn't work. "Call the HOA" isn't an action. Many boards are volunteers with day jobs, plenty of associations are run by a managing agent rather than by the board, and a director may genuinely not know how their project stands in a lender's eyes. A question about status often has nobody to answer it. A request for a specific document does. So name the documents. 1. The current adopted budget The operative one for this fiscal year, board-approved, with the reserve line visible rather than summarized. This is the page a lender reads. Ask the managing agent in writing so there is a record of when you asked. 2. The most recent reserve study, and its date Ask for the study itself, not a summary of it, and note how old it is. A study is the documented alternative to the budget calculation, and it carries the review only when it’s current and the budget actually funds it at the level the study recommends. A common answer is that there isn’t one. That is information, not a dead end: it means the budget calculation is what your buyer’s lender will be reading, and it means the ten-or-fewer-unit waiver is worth checking first. 3. The master insurance certificate and the declarations page Coverage on the building is part of what a lender looks at, and it is an easy one to have moved since anyone last checked. 4. A year of board minutes, plus a direct question Minutes are where a coming special assessment, a construction defect claim or a litigation posture shows up before it shows up anywhere else. Litigation earns its own question, because a lender can decline a project over an active case even where the rest of the file is clean, and that includes a case the board filed itself and counts as a win. Ask in the same email whether any special assessment or litigation is pending, so the answer is in writing rather than inferred. 5. The statement of unpaid assessments on your own unit Colorado gives an owner a route to this one. Under C.R.S. 38-33.3-316(8) an owner may request, in writing and delivered personally or by certified mail to the association’s registered agent, a written statement of the unpaid assessments currently levied against the unit. It has to be furnished within fourteen calendar days and it binds the association. That is a closing number rather than a diligence number, and it turns up on [what a seller actually nets](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/seller-net-proceeds-colorado/). 6. Then have the file read by someone who reads them Your broker, and a lender who actually does project review, at the planning stage rather than the contract stage. The point of assembling it early is that somebody who knows the standard looks at it while every option is still open. The file has one more use, and it comes later, once you are live. When offers arrive, the financed ones each name a lender. Before you accept, have your broker ask that lender one question: have you already reviewed this project, and how long does your review take? Two buyers at the same price are not the same offer if one lender has the project reviewed and the other has not started. Then there are three things you can do about what the file says. Which one you are in is the output of step six rather than something you decide: the person who reads the file tells you which of these you are looking at, and the choice is then yours. **Watch the budget cycle.** A budget is adopted every year and a reserve study can be commissioned. Neither is yours to do. You are not on the board, and this page is not telling a board how to fund anything. What one owner does control is knowing when the next budget or study lands, and choosing which of them is the current one when the sign goes up: the difference between an association's budget cycle landing in September and landing in February can be the difference between your buyer's lender reading the old document or the new one. **Price to the pool.** If the file says what it says and nothing about it is going to move before you want to sell, then you're selling to a smaller pool of buyers, and the honest response is to list knowing that rather than discover it in week four. Smaller is not unsellable, and it's worth being concrete about what it means: a project a conventional lender won't take still sells to portfolio lending, which prices worse and usually wants more money down, or to cash. Those buyers price differently, and a price set against a real buyer pool is a different number from one set against an imaginary one. **Beat the January date.** This one is a real lever, and unusually it is about dates rather than dollars. The 15 percent minimum is scheduled for loan applications dated on or after 4 January 2027, so a trade that gets a buyer to an application before that date is reviewed under the current floor. The general rule is worth confirming with a lender before you set a date. Which application date a particular investor counts is a question for your buyer's lender once you have an offer in hand. Count backwards honestly before you like this idea: an application before 4 January means under contract around late December, which is the thinnest part of the Boulder year. That is a real trade, and [whether to sell in fall or wait for spring](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/sell-in-fall-or-wait-for-spring-boulder/) works it properly. This isn't a reason to rush a seven-figure decision, but if you were already choosing between autumn and spring, it belongs in the comparison. Whichever branch you're in, we're describing a published standard, not telling you whether your association meets it. Don't read a percentage off a budget page and conclude anything, in either direction: what counts toward the reserve line, and what the percentage is measured against, is the lender's calculation rather than an eyeball test. ## Sequencing a trade with a third party inside it Which leg goes first, sell then buy or buy then sell, is the oldest question in a move-up, and [buying before you sell in Boulder](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/buy-before-you-sell-boulder/) works through the routes and what each one costs. This section adds one input to that decision rather than re-opening it. Pull the association file before you write an offer on anything. The reason is ordering. Everything downstream inherits the answer to one question, which is whether your sale is financeable to an ordinary conventional buyer: your list price, the offers you can responsibly accept, the closing date you can promise, the cash you can bring to the purchase. That answer comes from documents an owner can request in writing, at a point when acting on it is still cheap. If your association is professionally managed, expect to order these rather than be handed them: there is usually a fee, and turnaround is measured in days to weeks, not hours. The statute governing the assessment statement allows fourteen days on its own. That is the argument for doing this a season before you list rather than the week you sign. Discovering it in underwriting is the identical fact arriving at the worst possible moment, with your signature already on a purchase contract. And if you end up on the other side of this, buying an attached home yourself and watching an association packet arrive late, [what a buyer can do when HOA documents come late](https://truenorthboulder.com/guides/hoa-documents-came-late-can-i-walk/) covers the deadline that governs it. One thing a page like this cannot do for you: this is general information about a lender's published project standards, the Colorado contract, and one Colorado statute, not legal, tax or lending advice, and it is not an opinion about your association. Lender requirements change, investors differ, and the documents that matter are the ones with your project's name on them. Read them with your broker, a lender who does this work, and where the answer turns on your declaration, an attorney. Common questions ## Frequently asked Does this apply to my townhome if it is not a condominium?+ Probably not in the same way, and the difference is on your deed rather than in the listing. Fannie Mae waives project review for units in new and established PUD projects, subject to named exceptions, so the replacement-reserve test inside Full Review does not reach them. That is narrower than an exemption, and the conditions attached to it are your buyer's lender's to apply. Find out which one you own before you spend any time on the rest of it. Can I find out whether my association's reserves meet the standard before I list?+ You can request every document the calculation is made from, and you should. The current adopted budget, the most recent reserve study and its date, the master insurance certificate, the last year of board minutes, and any pending special assessment or litigation are all things an owner can ask the association or its managing agent for in writing. Whether what they show meets the standard is the lender's calculation rather than a percentage you read off a page, so get the file first and have it read by someone who does this work. My association has ten units. Does the review still happen?+ It may not. Fannie Mae expanded its waiver of project review to new and established projects with ten or fewer units, though the conditions attached to that waiver turn partly on unit count and partly on whether the project sits inside a larger development. Small Boulder buildings are common, so this is worth checking early rather than assuming the long review applies to you. My buyer's lender approved a neighbor last year. Why is mine different?+ Because the standard moved and it keys on the loan application date. Fannie Mae retired the Limited Review process for loan applications dated on or after 3 August 2026, so an established project that used to clear the short review is now reviewed under the Full Review process, unless the project falls inside one of the waivers. On 4 January 2027 the replacement-reserve minimum inside that review rises from 10 percent to 15 percent. A sale last year and a sale next spring can be reviewed under different rules with nothing about the building having changed. The bottom line The things that go wrong in a move-up tend to be somebody else’s decision, arriving late. This one is a document, and it exists today. The standard your buyer’s lender applies tightened in August and tightens again in January, and it keys on the day your buyer applies rather than the day you close, which is exactly why the useful moment to look is before you list rather than after you are under contract on the next house. The association file is a pre-listing document, not a closing one. Reading a budget against a lender’s standard is a short job when the paper is in front of you and an emergency when a buyer’s underwriter gets there first. If you’re a season out from trading an attached home for a house, this is the part of the trade that wants doing first. [Plan the sale leg first](https://truenorthboulder.com/contact/) *Daniel Hsieh is a licensed Colorado real estate broker with *True North Boulder*, brokered by *eXp Realty*. This is general information about published lender project standards, the Colorado contract, and Colorado common-interest-ownership law, not legal, tax or lending advice, and nothing here is an opinion about whether any particular association meets any standard. Verify current Selling Guide requirements and your own association's documents before acting.* Sources & data notes - **Project review, and the reserve requirement:** Fannie Mae Selling Guide [B4-2.2-01, Full Review Process](https://selling-guide.fanniemae.com/sel/b4-2.2-01/full-review-process?ref=truenorthboulder.com) (the section is titled Full Review Process and carries no Limited Review process; page stamped 08/05/2026, which is the Guide’s publication date and not the policy trigger below). The replacement-reserve requirement reads “at least 10% of the budget” as of this writing. The denominator is the association’s annual budgeted assessment income; the Lender Letter below states the same denominator in a different word order (“annual budgeted income assessment”), and neither quotation has been altered here to match the other. - **Waiver of project review, and the PUD position:** Fannie Mae Selling Guide [B4-2.1-02, Waiver of Project Review](https://selling-guide.fanniemae.com/sel/b4-2.1-02/waiver-project-review?ref=truenorthboulder.com) (project review waived for units in new and established PUD projects, subject to named exceptions; two- to four-unit condo projects waived; five- to ten-unit condo projects waived only where not part of a larger development or master association, which must be reviewed using the Full Review method). PUD unit conditions: Selling Guide [B4-2.3-01, Eligibility Requirements for Units in PUD Projects](https://selling-guide.fanniemae.com/sel/b4-2.3-01/eligibility-requirements-units-pud-projects?ref=truenorthboulder.com). - **The two effective dates:** Fannie Mae Lender Letter [LL-2026-03](https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/news-events/lender-letter-ll-2026-03-updates-project-standards-property-insurance-requirements?ref=truenorthboulder.com), dated 18 March 2026, read at the primary via an in-page fetch from Fannie Mae’s own page; that page returns 403 to ordinary retrieval, to a plain fetch and a browser user-agent alike. Retirement of Limited Review and the reserve-study changes apply to loan applications dated on or after **3 August 2026**; the 10 percent to 15 percent reserve increase applies to loan applications dated on or after **4 January 2027**. ⚠️ Two dates two days apart get confused: the *policy* trigger is 3 August 2026 (applications), while the Selling Guide update incorporating it published 5 August 2026, which is the stamp on the pages above. The Selling Guide is what governs a loan today; the Lender Letter is cited here only for the effective dates, which the Guide sections do not state. - **The statement of unpaid assessments:** C.R.S. 38-33.3-316(8), Colorado Revised Statutes 2026, Office of Legislative Legal Services, [Title 38](https://olls.info/crs/crs2026-title-38.htm?ref=truenorthboulder.com). The official 2026 code publishes each title as one large document, so the citation above is a locator within Title 38 rather than a link that lands on the subsection. Written request delivered personally or by certified mail to the association’s registered agent; statement furnished within fourteen calendar days; binding on the association, the executive board and every unit owner. - **Market figures:** CAR Local Market Update for Boulder, data from IRES, LLC, published via the [Loveland-Berthoud Association of REALTORS](https://lbaronline.com/category/housing-statistics/?ref=truenorthboulder.com), August 2026 release. Townhouse and condominium median sold price: $517,000 year to date through August 2026, $535,000 year to date through August 2025, $375,000 for August 2026, $433,500 for August 2025; and, from the July 2026 release, $500,000 for July 2026 against $458,630 for July 2025\. Townhouse and condominium sold listings: 260 year to date through August 2026, 25 in August 2026\. Single-family sold listings: 595 year to date through August 2026, 62 in August 2026\. The August report’s own footnote reads: “Current as of September 3, 2026\. All data from IRES, LLC and REcolorado. Report © 2026 ShowingTime Plus, LLC.” Its price rows carry the note that they do not account for seller concessions and/or down payment assistance. - This describes Fannie Mae requirements only. Other investors set their own, and no claim is made here about any other investor’s standards.