Carolina RealtyAdvisors
Guide 04 · Condominium
Uptown and South End condominiums
You are buying
the building,
not the unit.
Nine documents to read before you buy a Charlotte condo, what each one tells you, and the finding that can make a building unfinanceable for the buyer after you.
Prepared by
Mike Sposato, Broker-Owner
Licensed in North Carolina and South Carolina
mikesposato.com
704-396-4078
Edition 2026
Why this guide exists
The unit inspection takes three hours. The building takes a week and decides everything.
A condominium purchase is two transactions stacked on top of each other. One is the unit, and it behaves like any other house: you inspect it, you negotiate repairs, you close. The other is an undivided share of a building, an association, a budget, a reserve position, an insurance program and a rulebook, and that half is transacted entirely on paper.
Buyers spend their energy on the half they can walk through. The half that decides whether the place is a good buy is in the documents, and most of the documents are handed over during due diligence, when the clock is already running. This guide is what to ask for, in what order, and what each document is actually telling you.
Charlotte condominiums · N.C. Condominium Act, Chapter 47C
The document list
Nine things to get, and what each one is for.
-
Which statute governs the building
North Carolina condominiums created on or after 1 October 1986 are governed by the Condominium Act at Chapter 47C of the General Statutes. Older buildings may sit under the earlier Unit Ownership Act at Chapter 47A. Charlotte has stock on both sides of that date, and the two regimes are not identical.
Establish first: the date the condominium was created.
-
The declaration, the bylaws and every recorded amendment
The declaration defines what you own, what the association owns, and what is limited common element attached to your unit. Balconies, windows, terraces, parking and storage are the usual points of confusion, and the amendments are where the rules quietly changed.
Get: declaration, bylaws, all recorded amendments, with book and page.
-
The statement from the association on your unit
Unpaid assessments, pending charges and any violation on record attach to the unit. Request the association’s written statement of account for the specific unit rather than relying on the seller.
Request: a written statement of assessments and violations for this unit.
-
The budget and the reserve study
The budget tells you what the association spends. The reserve study tells you what it will have to spend, and whether it is funding it. A building with an old reserve study, or none, is not necessarily a bad building, but it is a building whose next ten years are unpriced.
Get: current budget, most recent reserve study, and the reserve balance.
-
Special assessments: passed, pending and discussed
Three categories, three different answers. One that has passed is a known number. One that is pending is a negotiation item. One that has only been discussed in a board meeting is the one nobody discloses, and it is why you read the minutes.
Ask in writing: any assessment passed, pending, or under discussion?
-
Board minutes for the last two years
This is the single highest-value document in the stack and the one buyers most often skip. Water intrusion, envelope repairs, elevator problems, insurance renewals that came back ugly, litigation, management turnover. It is all in the minutes, in plain language, before it is anywhere else.
Read: twenty-four months of board minutes, all of them.
-
The master insurance policy, and the deductible
Get the certificate and then get the actual deductible, because in a large building it can be substantial and the documents decide who pays it when a claim comes from inside a unit. That answer determines what your own unit-owner policy needs to cover, including loss assessment coverage.
Ask your insurance agent: what must my policy cover given this master policy?
-
Litigation and construction defect history
Whether the association is suing anyone or being sued, and whether there has ever been a defect claim against the builder or a repair program on the envelope. Active litigation can affect financing as well as value.
Ask in writing: is the association party to any litigation?
-
Project eligibility, before you fall in love with the unit
Lenders evaluate the project, not just the borrower. Owner-occupancy ratio, how much of the building a single entity owns, the share of commercial space, the delinquency rate and any significant deferred maintenance all feed that decision. Fannie Mae introduced explicit requirements around deferred maintenance and unsafe conditions in Lender Letter LL-2021-14, effective 1 January 2022, and project standards have continued to develop since.
Ask your lender: is this project eligible, and have you reviewed it before?
The finding that matters most
A building that cannot be financed cannot be sold at price.
Significant deferred maintenance, an unsafe condition, or a special assessment that the association has not funded can put a project outside conventional eligibility. When that happens the effect on you is not the loan. It is that your future buyer arrives with cash or with nothing, and a cash-only market is a discounted market. This is why the reserve study, the minutes and the assessment question are worth more of your due diligence than the unit inspection.
- Date of creation established, and the governing statute identified
- Declaration, bylaws and all amendments obtained
- Written statement of account for the unit
- Current budget and most recent reserve study
- Reserve balance and funding position
- Assessments passed, pending and under discussion, answered in writing
- Twenty-four months of board minutes read
- Master policy certificate and deductible obtained
- Unit-owner policy scoped with your agent, loss assessment included
- Litigation question answered in writing
- Lender confirmation that the project is eligible
- Rental cap, short-term rental rule, pet rule and parking status confirmed
Sources and limits
Where this comes from, and what it is not.
N.C. Unit Ownership Act — Chapter 47A, for older condominiums.
Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2021-14 — issued October 2021, effective 1 January 2022, introducing requirements for projects with significant deferred maintenance or unsafe conditions. Confirm the current Selling Guide provisions with your lender, because project eligibility standards change.
Building-specific answers are in that building’s recorded documents, not in this guide.
This guide is information for buyers. It is not legal advice, it is not insurance advice and it is not a lending decision. Mike Sposato is a licensed real estate broker in North Carolina and South Carolina. He reads these documents constantly and he is not an attorney; on a declaration provision with real legal weight, hire one.
Next step
Send him the building, not the listing.
Tell him the address and he will tell you what he already knows about that association before you spend a due diligence fee finding out.
Carolina Realty Advisors
1001 East Blvd, Suite B, Charlotte, NC 28203
704-396-4078 · mikesposato.com
Licensed in North Carolina and South Carolina