Condos in the Quiet Corner: Only Three Windham County Buildings Are FHA-Approved

There are three FHA-approved condominium projects in all of Windham County. Frontage Pointe in Killingly, Heritage Pines Estates in Putnam, and Thompson Hills West in North Grosvenordale. That's it. I checked HUD's own database on August 27, 2026, and one of those three — Heritage Pines, at 153 units the largest HUD-reviewed association in the county — loses its approval on December 6, 2026.

If you're using an FHA loan to buy a condo around here, that sentence is the whole ballgame. Most people don't find out until they're already under contract.

I've closed condo sales in ten different associations in this county. One of them is FHA-approved today. So let me walk you through what actually happens, because I've watched it happen.

This page is general information about how condominium financing and disclosure work in Connecticut. It isn't legal advice and it isn't a loan commitment. Approval statuses change — check them yourself using the links below, and have a Connecticut real estate attorney review any association's documents before you commit.

How condo financing falls apart around here

With a single-family house, the lender approves you and approves the house. Done. With a condo there's a third thing: the lender has to approve the association. For FHA, that means the association went out and got itself approved by HUD.

That approval isn't permanent. It runs three years, and somebody on the board has to file paperwork to renew it. Most boards around here are volunteers running a twelve-unit building with no property manager. Nobody renews. The approval quietly lapses, and the next buyer with an FHA pre-approval finds out at the worst possible moment.

Here's the whole county. Thirty-five condo projects in Windham County have been through HUD's project-approval review. As of the day I'm writing this:

Source: HUD Condominium lookup, entp.hud.gov, Windham County CT, all statuses, HRAP/DELRAP approval method, project search, retrieved August 27, 2026.

Most of those expirations happened all at once. Look at the dates and you'll see a wall of them on May 31 and July 31, 2011, when HUD changed its rules and the legacy approvals got swept out. Almost nobody here went back and re-certified.

For comparison, I ran the identical search for New London County the same afternoon. Thirty-four approved. Same state, one county over, more than eleven times as many. That's not a market difference. That's who filed the paperwork.

The three that are approved right now

Same source and date as above. An association can be mid-recertification; HUD's list shows only what's been processed.

Outside those three, nothing. Nothing in Brooklyn, Plainfield, Moosup, Central Village or Woodstock.

Now, about Heritage Pines, because I've closed five sales on Perry Street and I like that community. If the board doesn't re-certify, owners there lose access to FHA buyers, and in this price range that's a real slice of the market. Two things before anybody panics. First, there's a grace period — a board can use the cheaper recertification path from six months before the expiration date to six months after, so the practical deadline is closer to June 2027 than to December. Second, and this is the part that catches even experienced agents: Perry Street spans several buildings of different vintages, and I can't tell you from HUD's record alone which addresses sit inside the approved association. HUD's approval is registered to 61 Perry St. The units I've sold at 85 and 86 Perry are twenty years newer and a different product entirely. If you own or are buying anywhere on Perry Street, get your declaration out and confirm which legal association your unit is actually in. Do not assume.

The associations I've closed in, and where they stand

This is every Windham County condo association I've personally closed a sale in, matched against HUD's file. All of it, not the flattering half:

Unit counts and statuses from the HUD records above. "No HUD record found" means I couldn't match the complex to a HUD filing, which usually means the association never applied — but legal association names don't always match street names, so confirm with your lender.

Ten associations. One is financeable with an FHA loan today. That's the ratio, and it's why I wrote this page.

None of that is me running down these buildings. I've sold clients into most of them and they're still there. "Rejected" is HUD's word for a submission that didn't meet its criteria at the time — usually paperwork, owner-occupancy ratios or reserves. It's a filing status, not a verdict on the condition of the building. What it does mean is that the loan you walk in with decides which doors are open, and around here that narrows things fast.

Check it yourself before you trust me or anybody else. HUD's lookup is public and free at entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm. Choose Connecticut, type WINDHAM in the county box, set Status to All and Search Type to Project, and you'll see exactly what I saw. Statuses change, so run it the week you're writing an offer, not the month before.

If you're a veteran, the VA keeps a separate list at lgy.va.gov/lgyhub/condo-report. An FHA approval granted today doesn't carry over to the VA, and VA approval never counts for FHA. One wrinkle in your favor: projects FHA-approved before December 2009 were grandfathered onto the VA's list and still show there as "HUD Accepted." So check the VA list even if HUD says the FHA approval is dead.

What changed this month, and why the usual advice is now backwards

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rewrote their condo rules this year, and the timing matters if you're buying right now.

• August 3, 2026 — Fannie retired Limited Review, the shortcut it used to allow on established projects at lower loan-to-value ratios. Freddie Mac dropped its Streamlined Review the same day. What's left is a full document review or a waiver, and since the waiver tops out at ten units, associations with more than ten units now get the full review.
• Also August 3, 2026 — lenders can no longer accept the weakest reserve-funding method, the one that let an association's cash reserves drift toward zero.
• January 4, 2027 — on Full Review projects, the budget has to put at least 15% of assessment income into replacement reserves, up from 10%. A professional reserve study can substitute, but only if the association is actually funded to the study's highest recommended level, which for an older building is often more than 15%, not less.
• Back in March 2026, Fannie went the other way for the small ones: projects of ten units or fewer can skip project review — if a five-to-ten unit project isn't part of a master association or a larger development, and the lender still clears the association's insurance and checks Fannie's project database.
• Since July 1, 2026, the association's master insurance policy can't carry a per-unit deductible above $50,000, and you'll need your own HO-6 policy to cover the gap. Small volunteer-run associations often run high deductibles to hold premiums down, so this is a live reason a small building fails conventional review now.

Put those together and you get something that surprised me. For a small standalone association, conventional financing may have gotten easier at the same moment FHA stayed hard. Everybody's been told FHA is the loan for a starter condo. Around here, for a lot of these buildings, that's now the wrong first assumption. Ask your lender to price both.

Fair warning on that waiver, though. It only helps a five-to-ten unit project that stands on its own. A phased association like Williamsville Landing is exactly the fact pattern Fannie carves out. And a building with a foundation problem is going to trip the insurance and repair screens regardless.

One more on the January 2027 reserve rule. Connecticut doesn't require associations to fund reserves at any particular level — the budget summary has to state what the reserves are and how they're calculated, and that's it. The state never passed a reserve-study law after the Surfside collapse the way Florida and Maryland did. So starting in 2027 you'll have associations following Connecticut law perfectly and still failing a lender's test.

The condo market here is genuinely different

People assume a condo is just a cheaper house. The numbers say otherwise. Windham County, single-family against townhouse and condo, year to date through July 2026:

So yes, about $105,500 cheaper. But they take 45% longer to sell, and they don't go over asking. Countywide, single-family has been running above list this year. Condos land right on it.

If you're selling one, that's the whole strategy conversation: price it right the first time, because there's no bidding war coming to rescue an ambitious number. If you're buying one, you've probably got more negotiating room than your friends buying houses do.

Plainfield's the one to watch. Condo closings there are up 87.5% year over year, 15 so far against 8 last year. On a base of eight, read that as a signal and not a trend. Killingly and Putnam are running 11 each.

The disclosure gap nobody tells you about

General information, not legal advice. Confirm with a Connecticut real estate attorney.

When you buy a condo in Connecticut, the seller normally has to hand you a resale certificate. It's the most useful thing you'll read: reserves, capital projects coming, how many owners are 60+ days behind on dues, whether anybody's suing the association, whether there's been a foreclosure in the last year. The seller requests it from the association and pays for it — $185 as adjusted by statute, plus copying. The association then has ten business days from getting the request and the money, and it may charge up to $10 more to turn it around in three.

Once you receive it, you can void the contract for five days, not counting weekends or legal holidays — seven if it came by certified or registered mail. And here's the part almost nobody mentions: until that certificate is delivered, the contract stays voidable right up to the closing. So if the association stalls and it never shows, you have more room than you think, not less. That's Connecticut General Statutes section 47-270.

Now the trap. An association of twelve units or fewer can be exempt from providing one at all. For communities created on or after January 1, 1984, that's section 47-215(c), and it applies only if the community also isn't subject to development rights and doesn't use a master association. Read that statute closely, because it goes further than waiving the certificate: those associations aren't even required to keep the records that would let them produce one. For communities created before January 1, 1984 — and a lot of the mill conversions and 1970s townhouse projects around here are — the governing section is 47-217, with a similar twelve-unit test but different conditions.

The practical takeaway doesn't depend on which section applies: ask how many units are in the association and when it was created, early. If it's small and old, assume the certificate may not be coming and ask directly for the budget, the reserve balance, the last two years of meeting minutes and the insurance declarations page. Ask in writing. If the answer is vague, that is the answer.

Special assessments, and the one that scares me

Under section 47-261e, a board can levy special and emergency assessments without owner approval as long as everything it proposes in the same calendar year adds up to no more than 15% of the association's last adopted budget for that year. Above that, it goes to the owners — but pay attention to how: the assessment is deemed approved unless a majority of all unit owners actually votes it down, and a failed quorum doesn't save anybody. Silence is consent. And if two-thirds of the board votes that an assessment is an emergency, it's effective immediately, with notice to owners after the fact and the money restricted to what the vote described.

Most of the time that's fine and it's how a roof gets replaced. Here's where it isn't.

Brooklyn, Plainfield, Putnam and Thompson are among the Windham County towns with crumbling foundation claims. If you've been around here a while you know what pyrrhotite does to a foundation and what it costs. Now put that under a condo building. The repair can run past what a unit is worth, a chunk of it can be levied without a vote, a lender will treat the project as ineligible until the work is actually finished — and if the association is small enough, there's no resale certificate that would have warned you.

I'm not saying that's happening in any particular building. I'm saying it's the first thing I'd check, and I don't see it discussed often. One hard limit to know: Connecticut Foundation Solutions Indemnity Company covers condominiums, but the enabling law caps it at four dwelling units on a single foundation — so five or more units sharing one foundation are ineligible, which rules out most multi-unit condo buildings. Four-unit townhouse-style foundations can qualify. Program rules and funding have moved around over the years, so call CFSIC at (844) 763-1207 and get current answers rather than trusting anything online, this page included.

What I'd actually do, in order

1. Ask your lender which loan you're really using before you fall in love with a unit. FHA, VA and conventional give three different answers here, and the answer changes which buildings you can even consider.
2. Look the association up on HUD's site yourself. Two minutes. Screenshot it with the date showing.
3. If you're a veteran, check the VA list too. Separate database, separate answer.
4. Ask how many units are in the association, and when it was created. Twelve or fewer, and pre- or post-1984, changes what you're entitled to see.
5. Ask for the reserve balance and the last two years of minutes. Minutes are where assessments get discussed before they get levied.
6. Ask directly whether any special assessment is being discussed. Not "planned." Discussed.
7. In the pyrrhotite towns, ask about the foundation specifically. Then ask again.
8. Have a Connecticut real estate attorney read the association documents. Closings here go through an attorney anyway. Use them for this.

Common questions

If you're buying or selling a condo around here

Call me at (860) 617-8493. Tell me which building you're looking at and what loan you're using, and I'll tell you what I know about that association — and if I don't know it, I'll say so and go find out. I've closed in ten of these associations and I keep track of which ones are financeable, because it's killed more of my deals than price has.

Skyla Gagnon, REALTOR® · RE/MAX Bell Park Realty, 610 Hartford Pike, Dayville, CT 06241 · Office: (860) 774-7600 · Direct: (860) 617-8493

Sources and dates. FHA condominium approval statuses, project names, unit counts and expiration dates from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Condominium lookup (entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm), Windham County and New London County, Connecticut, all statuses, HRAP/DELRAP approval method, project search, retrieved August 27, 2026. County market figures from the SmartMLS Local Market Update for Windham County, year to date through July 2026, published August 8, 2026; town condo counts from the Plainfield, Killingly and Putnam Local Market Updates, same date. Sales reported by members of SmartMLS do not represent all sales in the area; information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Connecticut statutes cited are CGS 47-270 (resale certificates), 47-215(c) and 47-217 (small association exemptions) and 47-261e (special assessments). Conventional loan requirements from Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03, issued March 18, 2026, and the Fannie Mae Selling Guide sections B4-2.1-02 and B4-2.2-02; Freddie Mac's Streamlined Review retirement from its Condominium Unit Mortgage guidance. FHA approval term and recertification window from 24 CFR 203.43b and Form HUD-9992 instructions; Single-Unit Approval limits from HUD Mortgagee Letter 2019-13. VA condominium acceptance from VA Circular 26-09-19. Crumbling foundation town references from the Connecticut Department of Housing; CFSIC eligibility from Connecticut Foundation Solutions Indemnity Company, LLC. Transaction history from Skyla Gagnon's SmartMLS closed records, 2016 through August 2026.

FHA and VA approval statuses change, and an association may be mid-recertification. Verify any association at the HUD and VA links above and confirm eligibility with your lender before relying on anything here.

Last updated August 27, 2026.