For first-time buyers using FHA
Buying with FHA in Miami-Dade: what passes, what does not
Almost everything written about FHA is written by lenders, about the loan. This is the other half, and it is the half that decides whether your contract closes: which houses pass an FHA appraisal and which do not. The rules are HUD's, and they read the same in Homestead, Kendall, Palmetto Bay or anywhere else in Miami-Dade. What changes is the housing stock they land on. Two tools here do the real work - the appraisal checklist and the price check. Use them rather than reading all of it. Every figure carries a date, because FHA resets them annually.
Updated 2026-10-05
Where my lane ends, and where I work
Stated once, so it is not repeated below. If the question is about the loan, ask a licensed mortgage lender. If it is about the house, ask me. Qualifying, credit, debt-to-income, interest rates, how much you can borrow and whether you are eligible for any particular down payment assistance are loan questions. They belong with a licensed mortgage loan originator, because mortgage origination is licensed activity under the federal SAFE Act and under Chapter 494, Florida Statutes.
What is left is most of what actually goes wrong. FHA's property rules run to dozens of pages and are almost entirely about the house: the roof, the water heater, the paint, the drainage, the power line over the back yard, the condominium's paperwork. None of it is visible from a lender's desk. That is the agent's work.
I work across Miami-Dade County - Homestead and Florida City, Cutler Bay and Palmetto Bay, the Kendall corridor, the Redland and the county generally. Everything on this page is county-level by nature: the loan limit, HUD's property rules and the condominium approval list are Miami-Dade facts, not neighborhood ones. Whether a house was built in 1958 or 2004 matters far more to an FHA appraisal than which city it sits in.
One definition, since people ask. FHA is not a first-time buyer program, although first-time buyers are most of who uses it. Handbook 4000.1 defines a first-time homebuyer as someone who has held no ownership interest in another property in the three years prior to the case number assignment - the clock runs to the case number, not to your closing date - and it also covers someone divorced or legally separated whose only principal-residence interest was held jointly with a spouse over that period. Other programs write their own definitions.
Is the price inside the 2026 Miami-Dade limit?
For FHA case numbers assigned on or after 1 January 2026, the FHA forward mortgage limit for a one-unit property in Miami-Dade County is $667,000. Two units is $853,900, three units $1,032,150 and four units $1,282,700. Those are HUD's published figures, from Mortgagee Letter 2025-23 dated 11 December 2025 and from HUD's county loan-limit data file, which I pulled on 5 October 2026.
Two things about that number. FHA sets it by metropolitan area rather than by county, using the county with the highest median price in the area, which is why Broward and Palm Beach carry the identical $667,000. And it moves: the Miami-Dade one-unit limit for 2025 was $654,350. For national context only, the 2026 one-unit floor is $541,287 and the one-unit ceiling is $1,249,125, and Miami-Dade sits between them.
What an FHA appraiser flags, and what it cannot touch
The standard is three words. HUD's Minimum Property Requirements "refer to general requirements that all homes insured by FHA be safe, sound, and secure." That is the whole test on a resale. It is not a condition grade, not a quality standard and not a renovation list.
The appraiser is required to limit what they call for. Handbook 4000.1 says the appraiser "must limit required repairs to those repairs necessary to: maintain the safety, security and soundness of the Property; preserve the continued marketability of the Property; and protect the health and safety of the occupants." And on age: "If an element is functioning well but has not reached the end of its useful life, the Appraiser should not recommend replacement because of age." Nothing here is replaced for being old.
Nor does the appraiser have the last word. "Regardless of the Appraiser's suggested repairs, the Mortgagee will determine which repairs are required." Mortgagee means lender. The appraiser flags; the lender decides - so a repair call is a question worth asking, not a bill worth conceding. It does drive the calendar, though: required repairs have to be done and verified before the loan is approved, not credited at closing, which is why a call in week four moves the closing date and why it is worth finding the likely calls in week one.
HUD also names, in writing, what is not required. Its examples of cosmetic: "missing handrails that do not pose a threat to safety, holes in window screens, cracked window glass, defective interior paint surfaces in housing constructed after 1978, minor plumbing leaks that do not cause damage (such as a dripping faucet), and other inoperable or damaged components" that pose no health and safety issue in the appraiser's judgment. Which kills the most durable myth in this business: FHA does not require handrails. The handrail rule people quote at each other sits in the part of the handbook governing servicing and loss mitigation, not in the appraisal requirements for a resale purchase.
And the one that matters more to you than to the seller: an FHA appraisal is not a home inspection, and HUD says so itself. The disclosure your lender must give you, form HUD-92564-CN, is titled For Your Protection: Get a Home Inspection and states "Appraisals are NOT Home Inspections!" Hire your own inspector. The appraiser is working for the lender.
Outside the walls, where deals actually die
The appraisal does not stop at the paint. Two of the items below can end a purchase outright rather than merely cost somebody a repair.
The overhead power line. No overhead electric power transmission line may pass directly over any dwelling, structure or related property improvement, "including pools", and HUD's language is flat: "The power line must be relocated for a Property to be eligible for FHA-insured financing." The residential service drop may not cross a pool, spa or water feature either. Where the dwelling or its improvements sit inside the easement area, the lender must obtain certification from the utility company or the local regulator that the arrangement conforms to local standards and is safe.
Flood zone, and the correction worth having. Being in a flood zone does not make a house FHA-ineligible. A property is ineligible only if a residential building and its related improvements are in a Special Flood Hazard Area - a zone beginning with A or V - and National Flood Insurance Program coverage "is not available in the community"; or if the improvements are within the Coastal Barrier Resources System, in which case the appraiser stops work and reports it. Miami-Dade communities participate in the NFIP, so an A-zone house here is not FHA-ineligible on that basis alone. The appraiser records the zone, the map panel number and the map date and attaches the panel. What flood insurance costs is worth a quote early; it is not an eligibility bar.
Access, which is a Redland and agricultural-parcel problem. The property needs safe pedestrian access and what HUD calls Adequate Vehicular Access from a public or private street, protected by a permanent recorded easement, an ownership interest, or ownership and maintenance by a homeowners association. Adequate means "an all-weather road surface over which emergency and typical passenger vehicles can pass at all times." A shared driveway outside an association has to meet the same test. On a parcel reached by an unpaved track, settle this before anything else.
Well and septic, with a change from this summer. For existing construction the handbook sets separation distances of 10 feet to the property line, 50 feet to a septic tank and 100 feet to a drain field, the drain field figure reduced to 75 feet where the local authority allows it. Then the change worth knowing: on 27 July 2026, under FHA INFO 2026-17, FHA broadly waived those well distance requirements for existing construction where the property meets the local jurisdiction's distances and the lender documents acceptable water testing results. The practical effect on an existing house is that Florida's and Miami-Dade's distances govern. But the waiver is conditional, it does not cover new construction and it carries an end date, so have your lender confirm it is still in force. A well water test may be no more than 180 days old at disbursement, and a shared well needs a shared well agreement plus inspection and testing.
Two smaller ones. A disclosed past termite treatment - routine across the county - is enough on its own to trigger a pest inspection condition, which is why it is in the checklist above. And security bars on bedroom windows or doors, common on older stock, must be reported by the appraiser. Reporting is not failing, but a seller is better off knowing it is coming.
Condominiums and townhouses: settle it in the first ten minutes
This is where FHA buyers lose the most time, and it is entirely avoidable. HUD's rule is short: "A Condominium Unit must be either located within an FHA-approved Condominium Project, meet FHA's definition of a Site Condominium, or have completed the FHA Single-Unit Approval process before a Mortgage can be insured." Three routes. If none is open, the unit cannot be financed with FHA at all - so this is a first-ten-minutes question, not a post-inspection one.
Route one, the approved list, is short. I ran HUD's own condominium lookup on 5 October 2026 for Florida, status Approved, search type Project: 72 projects in the entire state, and 11 in Miami-Dade County. In a county with tens of thousands of condominium units, 11 is the whole of route one - which is why single-unit approval, not project approval, is the realistic path for most resale condominiums here. Run it yourself at entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm; I am not printing project names that would be stale by the time you read them.
Three things will trip you up on that search. The Status filter defaults to All, so Expired, Rejected and Withdrawn projects come back looking exactly like hits - read the status column. The Search Type field defaults to Both, which returns project records and submission records together: the same Miami-Dade approved search returns 21 rows on Both and 11 on Project, so set it to Project if you want a count of approved projects. And the list carries the recorded legal project name rather than the name on the sign at the entrance, so search by city or ZIP code rather than by name. Watch the dates too - a project approval runs three years from the date it was placed on the approved list, and recertification has to be submitted within six months either side of that expiry or the project must re-apply for full review.
Route two quietly saves deals. "Site Condominiums do not require Condominium Project Approval or Single-Unit Approval." A site condominium is a project of entirely single-family detached dwellings with no shared garages or other attached buildings; or one of detached or horizontally attached townhouse-style dwellings where the unit is the dwelling and the land, contains no manufactured housing, and is encumbered by a declaration of condominium. The owner carries all insurance and maintenance for the unit dwelling, landscaping excepted. Many townhouse-style developments across the county are held in condominium form and may qualify, which means the project never needs to appear on any list. And a distinction people get wrong constantly, Cutler Bay townhouse tracts included: a fee-simple townhome in a homeowners association is not a condominium, and there is no FHA approval list for it - the appraiser simply identifies the planned unit development by name, checks the PUD box and reports the association fee.
Route three is single-unit approval, the successor to what the market still calls spot approval. Your lender does it, not you and not me. Most of what gets checked is the association's business rather than yours: owner occupancy of at least 50 percent, no more than 15 percent of units more than 60 days past due on dues or special assessments, separate operating and reserve accounts with the reserve funded at a minimum of 10 percent of 12 months of assessments, control transferred from the developer, at least five units, no manufactured housing, and no financial distress event in the last three years. Then the headcount caps, which catch small buildings fast: FHA may stop issuing case numbers where its insurance concentration exceeds 10 percent in a project of 20 or more units, and "for Condominium Projects with less than 20 Units, the number of FHA-insured Mortgages cannot exceed two."
Some characteristics are an absolute no with no route around them: cooperative ownership, a condotel, a timeshare or segmented-ownership project, more than one dwelling per unit, a houseboat project, a continuing care facility, or a location in the Coastal Barrier Resources System. And neither you nor I can apply - a request has to come from the lender, the builder, the developer, the association, its management company, a project consultant or an attorney acting for them. The association and its management company being on that list is the lever worth pulling.
When it will not pass as it stands, and how to write the offer
A house that fails the minimum property requirements is not automatically a house you cannot buy. There are two mechanisms, and between them they cover most of what goes wrong on older county stock.
A repair escrow is the smaller intervention. Quite apart from any rehabilitation program, a lender "may establish a repair escrow for incomplete construction, or for alterations and repairs that cannot be completed prior to loan closing, provided the housing is habitable and safe for occupancy at the time of loan closing." The lender executes form HUD-92300 and certifies completion on HUD-92051. That is the answer when the required work cannot realistically be finished before closing but the house is livable meanwhile.
Section 203(k) is the bigger one: it insures the purchase and the rehabilitation in a single mortgage, with part of the proceeds paying the seller and the rest held in escrow and released as the work is done. The property must have been completed at least a year before the case number assignment. A limited 203(k) covers minor remodeling and nonstructural repairs with total rehabilitation costs capped at $75,000 - current as of Handbook 4000.1 Update 18, dated 12 August 2026, and re-evaluated annually alongside the loan limits. A standard 203(k) handles structural work, carries a $5,000 minimum repair cost and requires a HUD-approved consultant. Which one a house forces you into is defined, not discretionary: work expected to take more than nine months, more than four draws per contractor, repairs needing a work write-up or architectural exhibits, or more than 30 days of displacement all push it into standard. The four-draw test is new, from Mortgagee Letter 2026-06 dated 23 June 2026. Before committing to a wreck, ask about a consultant feasibility study; HUD caps that fee at $375.
Three dated clauses to raise in week one rather than week five. A property being resold 90 days or fewer after the seller's date of acquisition "is not eligible for an FHA-insured Mortgage" - that is absolute, and the acquisition date is in the county record, which matters on the flips that are common here. Between 91 and 180 days, a resale price 100 percent or more above what the seller paid requires a second appraisal from a different appraiser, at a cost that cannot be charged to you. And at least one borrower must occupy within 60 days of signing the security instrument and intend to stay a year, which matters the moment a seller asks to stay on after closing.
The amendatory clause is the fourth. If you do not receive form HUD-92800.5B before signing the sales contract, the contract must be amended before closing to say you are not obligated to complete the purchase, or to forfeit your deposit, unless you are given a written statement of an appraised value of not less than a stated figure - while you keep "the privilege and option of proceeding with consummation of the contract without regard to the amount of the appraised valuation."
And the myth sellers will quote at you: that a low FHA appraisal sticks to the house for six months and poisons the next buyer. As usually stated, that is wrong. "The Mortgagee must order a new appraisal for each case number assignment and may not reuse an appraisal that was performed under another active or endorsed case number, even if the prior appraisal is not yet more than 180 Days old." There is a narrow real version underneath: where a case number was canceled and never endorsed, that appraisal may be used. On contributions, which is a contract-drafting point: interested parties, which HUD defines to include the seller, the agents, the builder, the developer and the lender, "may contribute up to 6 percent of the sales price" toward closing costs and prepaid items, so treat 6 percent as the ceiling when the contract is written and let the lender apply it.
Then the unglamorous part, which is most of the job. Find the roof's permit date before writing. Ask whether a termite treatment has ever been done. Look up for a transmission line. Get the condominium's current status out of HUD's lookup before the second showing. Have the utilities on before the appraiser is scheduled. And put in writing to the listing agent that required repairs are limited to safety, security, soundness and marketability, that cosmetic items are not required, that nothing is replaced for age alone, and that the lender rather than the appraiser decides what has to be fixed.
Common questions
What will make a house fail an FHA appraisal?
Less than people think. FHA's standard is that the home be safe, sound and secure, and HUD requires the appraiser to limit required repairs to what is necessary for the safety, security and soundness of the property, its continued marketability, and the health and safety of the occupants. Cosmetic items are not required and nothing is replaced simply for being old. The items that do cause trouble on older Miami-Dade houses are a roof with less than two years of remaining physical life, a water heater missing its temperature and pressure-relief valve or its discharge piping, visible frayed or exposed wiring, defective paint on a home built before 1978, grading that does not drain away from the house, and an overhead power transmission line passing directly over the house or the pool - that last one has to be relocated before the property is eligible at all. Verified against HUD Handbook 4000.1 Update 18, dated 12 August 2026.
Does FHA require handrails on stairs?
No. There is no general FHA minimum property requirement that stairs have a handrail, and HUD's own list of cosmetic items that do not require repair specifically includes missing handrails that do not pose a threat to safety. The handrail rule people quote - covering elevated exterior porches, patios, decks and balconies where the drop to the ground is greater than 18 inches - sits in the part of HUD Handbook 4000.1 that governs servicing and loss mitigation, which is about a lender preserving a property it already holds, not about the appraisal of a resale purchase. On a normal purchase a missing handrail is repairable only if it genuinely poses a safety threat.
Does the air conditioning have to work to pass an FHA appraisal?
Central air conditioning is not required by FHA, but if it is installed it must be operational. Where it is installed and not working, the appraiser indicates the level of deferred maintenance, analyzes and reports the effect on marketability and includes the cost to cure - so a dead air handler is not an automatic FHA failure in South Florida, and it is not ignored either. Separately, the permanently installed heating system must be able to heat all gross living areas automatically to a minimum of 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Verified against HUD Handbook 4000.1 Update 18, dated 12 August 2026.
What is the FHA loan limit in Miami-Dade County?
For FHA case numbers assigned on or after 1 January 2026, the FHA forward mortgage limit for a one-unit property in Miami-Dade County is $667,000. Two units is $853,900, three units $1,032,150 and four units $1,282,700. Those figures come from HUD Mortgagee Letter 2025-23, dated 11 December 2025. The same limits apply in Broward and Palm Beach, because FHA sets them by metropolitan area using the county with the highest median price in the area. For national context only, the 2026 one-unit floor is $541,287 and the one-unit ceiling is $1,249,125, and Miami-Dade sits between them. These are republished every year - the Miami-Dade one-unit figure for 2025 was $654,350 - so check HUD's own lookup rather than any figure on a web page, this one included.
Is FHA only for first-time buyers?
No. FHA is not a first-time buyer program, although first-time buyers are most of who uses it, and nothing on the property side of the rules changes either way. Where the label does matter, for programs that use it, the definition HUD applies in Handbook 4000.1 is someone who has held no ownership interest in another property in the three years prior to the case number assignment - the clock runs to the case number, not to your closing date - and it also covers someone divorced or legally separated whose only principal-residence interest over that period was held jointly with a spouse. Other programs write their own definitions, so read the one in front of you rather than assuming.
Can I use an FHA loan on a house in a flood zone?
Usually yes. Being in a flood zone is not by itself disqualifying. A property is ineligible for FHA insurance only if a residential building and its related improvements are in a Special Flood Hazard Area, meaning a zone beginning with A or V, and National Flood Insurance Program insurance is not available in that community; or if the improvements are within the Coastal Barrier Resources System. To be eligible, a property in an SFHA must be in a community that participates in the NFIP and has NFIP available - and Miami-Dade communities participate, so an A-zone house in the county is not FHA-ineligible on that basis alone. The appraiser records the zone designation, the map panel number and the map date and attaches the panel to the report. What flood insurance costs is a separate question worth getting a quote on early, and it is not an eligibility question.
How do I find out if a condo is FHA approved?
Search HUD's condominium list at entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm. Three warnings. The Status filter defaults to All, so expired, rejected and withdrawn projects come back looking like approvals and you have to read the status column. The Search Type field defaults to Both, which returns project records and submission records together and inflates the count - the same Miami-Dade approved search returns 21 rows on Both and 11 on Project, so set it to Project. And the list carries the recorded legal project name rather than the name on the entrance sign, so search by city or ZIP code instead of by name. Check the expiration date too, because an approval runs three years from the date the project was placed on the list. Be prepared for the list to be short: searching on 5 October 2026 returned 72 approved projects in all of Florida and 11 in Miami-Dade County. If the project is not approved that is not the end of it - a unit may still be financeable through FHA single-unit approval, and a detached or townhouse-style project held in condominium form may qualify as a site condominium, which needs no approval at all. A fee-simple townhome in a homeowners association is not a condominium and is not on any FHA list.
Can I buy a house that needs repairs with an FHA loan?
Often yes, through one of two mechanisms. Where the required work cannot be finished before closing but the house is habitable and safe for occupancy, the lender may set up a repair escrow and certify the work afterwards. Where the condition is beyond that, FHA's Section 203(k) insures the purchase and the rehabilitation in a single mortgage: part of the proceeds pays the seller and the rest is held in escrow and released as the work is completed. A limited 203(k) covers minor remodeling and nonstructural repairs with total rehabilitation costs capped at $75,000, a figure current as of HUD's handbook dated 12 August 2026 and re-evaluated annually alongside the loan limits. A standard 203(k) handles larger and structural work, carries a $5,000 minimum repair cost and requires a HUD-approved consultant. Before committing to a wreck, ask about a consultant feasibility study, which HUD caps at $375. The loan side of all of this belongs with a licensed mortgage lender. What I can tell you is which route a particular house is likely to need.
Send me the address before you fall in love with it
Anywhere in Miami-Dade - Homestead, Florida City, Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay, the Kendall corridor or the rest of the county - send me the address and I will tell you what an FHA appraiser is likely to flag on it: the roof's permit date and whether it has two years left in it, whether a transmission line crosses the lot, the paint question if it was built before 1978, and, if it is a condominium, its exact current status in HUD's own list with the expiration date. If it will not pass as it stands, I will tell you whether a repair escrow or a 203(k) is the realistic route to ask your lender about. Zachary Tranten, P.A., REALTOR(R) - Keys Gate Realty, 10 NE 3rd Street, Florida City, FL 33034. Call or text (305) 905-9938.
Related
Written for buyers of homes anywhere in Miami-Dade County - Homestead, Florida City, Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay, the Kendall corridor, the Redland and the wider county - first-time buyers included. The property requirements, appraisal rules, condominium approval rules and 203(k) figures were verified against the FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1, Update 18, issued 12 August 2026, and against HUD Mortgagee Letters 2025-23, 2026-06 and 2024-13, on 5 October 2026. The Miami-Dade loan limits were taken from HUD's calendar-year 2026 county loan-limit data file and the condominium counts were measured on that date using HUD's own approved-condominium lookup. Several sections cited, including the property acceptability and condominium criteria, carry a 10 November 2026 implementation date: lenders may apply them now and must from that date, so practice can differ between lenders until then. The well distance requirements described here are subject to a HUD waiver for existing construction dated 27 July 2026 and announced in FHA INFO 2026-17, which is conditional on local jurisdiction distances and documented water testing and carries its own end date, so confirm it is still in force. HUD has also published proposed revisions to its minimum property requirements - FHA INFO 2026-22, dated 22 September 2026, comment deadline 6 November 2026 - which were a proposal and not policy as at the date above; nothing here describes their contents. FHA loan limits and the 203(k) rehabilitation cost cap are reset annually, so re-check any figure against HUD rather than relying on this page's date stamp. The checklist and the price check on this page are reading aids, not an appraisal and not an eligibility determination. This page deals with the property side of FHA, which is a real estate licensee's work. It is not lending advice, legal advice or tax advice, and it is not an offer or solicitation to originate a mortgage loan: questions about qualifying, credit, debt-to-income, interest rates, borrowing capacity or down payment assistance eligibility must go to a licensed mortgage loan originator, because mortgage origination is licensed activity under the federal SAFE Act and Chapter 494, Florida Statutes. Equal Housing Opportunity.