Sk clearly your case was an exception. Also if the condo you were talking about was going to be purchased as an owner occupied unit but all of the sudden someone makes a bulk purchase to throw the ratios completely out of whack then of course a lender will not loan on it for owner occupants. No lender would. Was the property for owner occupancy or for an investment?
To the OP… The HOA will not have any opinion on whether you can finance the home or not and frankly it would be a liability for them to make any statement as such. All you can get from them is whether there is any on going or past litigation and whether there have been any builders defects. Have your realtor look at all of the sales in the conplex for the past several years to see if any of those deals were financed. Try to get the hoa to give you the property managers number to get the owner occupancy although it should not matter since you are purchasing the home as a rental.
Don’t expect help from the hoa, you are on your own so make sure ytou have a good lender who will not make promises up front that they cannot keep. Since it is a short sale then things are not going to happen for awhile anyways. If you are gonna use cash then hopefully you can get a better deal.
