Thinking of buying a home in Columbus’ Short North? Here are some of the homes available in Victorian Village.

This Sunday is the 35th annual Victorian Village tour of homes.  In this nicely done video, Martin Kehlmeier talks a little about the this year’s tour and gives a sneak peek of his Neil Avenue Home.

As in recent years, the tour is opened up to homes in Harrison West and Italian Village.  As a bonus, if you’ve ever wanted to see the Downtown views from the top of the Westminster Thurber independent living senior facility, here is your chance.

This year’s tour includes an updated Park Street Condo, some fabulous homes in Victorian Village, and 11 stops all together throughout the Short North. Tickets are $25 in advance.

Effective earlier this year, when financing a condo, lenders must verify there is INTERIOR insurance on the unit.  Usually the condo association provides for the exterior insurance.

Lenders don’t escrow for that interior insurance, (collect a portion up-front at the closing) but they need to verify that it is in place at the time of closing.

Prior to this time, lenders would let the owner decide if they wanted to buy insurance or not. The type of Insurance would be almost identical to renter’s insurance and would cover the home owner’s belongings and improvements to the interior of the condo.

Ask your favorite Insurance Agent for details on both home owner and condo owner insurance.

The Battleship building in Downtown Columbus, Ohio currently has FOUR units available from $135,000 to $174,900

One of the criteria Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae now use to make a condo complex conforming to their guidelines is that the complex cannot have more than 20% of its total square footage as Commercial space. 

If that is the case, only a portfolio lender can finance the condo in that complex. 

Most building downtown would be OK, but a perfect example is the Battleship Building in the arena district which has 22% of its space used as Commercial.

FHA mortgages aren’t available for all condos.  Downtown, most of the not-yet-approved condo buildings have attained FHA status or are busy trying to attain approval. It makes a BIG difference wether or not a buyer can put down FHA’s 3.5% or conventional’s 20%.

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