Can an HOA charge a fee for a lender or mortgage questionnaire?
Reviewed by the OurHOA team · Updated June 2026
When you buy, refinance, or sell, your lender asks the HOA to complete a project questionnaire. Who fills it out, what it can cost, and the limits on that fee.
What a lender or mortgage questionnaire is
When you buy, refinance, or sell a home in an association, your mortgage lender almost always sends the HOA a questionnaire before it will approve the loan. On a condo it is often a standardized form - Fannie Mae calls its version Form 1076 - and on a planned development it may be a shorter project or HOA certification. The lender is not asking about your unit so much as about the association itself: the owner-occupancy ratio, the percentage of owners who are delinquent on dues, how much sits in reserves, whether the HOA is involved in litigation, its master insurance, and whether any single person or entity owns too many units. Those answers decide whether the loan is warrantable - eligible to be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac - which is a different question from the payoff or estoppel figure a closing needs. See our guide on what a warrantable vs non-warrantable HOA means for why those answers can make or break financing.
Who completes it, and why there is a fee
Someone has to pull the numbers and fill out the form - usually the community manager, or the board itself in a self-managed HOA. Because it takes real staff time and often has to be turned around on a deadline, management companies and the third-party document portals they use (services with names like CondoCerts or HomeWiseDocs) commonly charge a questionnaire or lender-letter fee, frequently in the $100 to $400 range, sometimes more for a rush. A genuinely self-managed community may complete it for little or nothing. The fee pays for the labor of assembling and certifying the answers, not for permission to get a loan.
Can they charge, and what limits apply
Generally yes - an association or its manager can charge a reasonable fee for the work of completing a lender questionnaire, but the authority to charge it should trace back to the governing documents or an adopted board fee policy, not be invented on the spot. Several states regulate the document and transfer fees an HOA may collect around a sale, and the common thread is that the charge must be reasonable and tied to the actual cost of the work. A lender questionnaire is also a separate document from the estoppel or resale certificate a closing requires, so watch for being billed twice for overlapping information - our guide on the estoppel or resale certificate fee covers that separate charge and its caps.
Who pays, and when
Who ultimately pays is a matter of the transaction, not a fixed rule. In a purchase, the buyer and seller can allocate document and questionnaire fees in the contract, and it is worth negotiating up front. In a refinance there is no seller, so the borrower typically absorbs it. A legitimate rush or expedite fee should appear only when faster turnaround was actually requested and delivered - not as an automatic add-on. Ask for the fee in writing before you order the document so there are no surprises on the closing statement.
Red flags to watch for
A few patterns deserve a second look: duplicate fees for the same information split across a questionnaire, an estoppel, and a resale packet; an update or re-issue fee to refresh a form the HOA completed only weeks earlier; a rush charge on a document that was not actually expedited; or a fee attached to a disclosure the association is legally required to provide. Separately, remember that the fee and the answers are two different problems - a small fee is an annoyance, but a questionnaire that reports high delinquencies, thin reserves, or pending litigation can render the project non-warrantable and stall your loan entirely. Our guide on whether HOA problems can stop you from getting a mortgage or refinance walks through that larger risk.
How OurHOA helps
Most questionnaire pain comes from disorganized records - a manager scrambling to reconstruct the delinquency rate, reserve balance, insurance details, and litigation status while a buyer's clock ticks. OurHOA helps small self-managed communities keep those numbers current and in one place, so a lender questionnaire can be answered quickly, accurately, and without padding the fee to cover a fire drill. It is software for running a community transparently, not a law firm or a lender; because document-fee limits and warrantability rules vary by state and by your governing documents and loan program, confirm what applies to your sale or refinance with your lender or a qualified professional.
OurHOA is the friendly, affordable way self-managed communities keep dues, records, and reminders in one place. See how it works.
These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.