Condotel
Condominium Hotel
What is a condotel?
A condominium operated like a hotel — rental pool, hotel services, on-site management. Investor-friendly financing requires a non-QM lender.
A condotel — short for “condominium hotel” — is a building where individual units are owned as condominiums but the building operates much like a hotel. Units are typically pooled into a short-term rental program managed by an on-site management company. Guests check in at a front desk, housekeeping services run between stays, and the building offers hotel-style amenities (pools, restaurants, concierge).
Condotels are common in resort markets — Miami Beach, Orlando, Las Vegas, the Outer Banks, ski-resort towns — where short-term vacation demand creates attractive nightly rates. From a financing perspective, condotels carry an unusual risk profile: revenue depends on tourism, the HOA budget includes substantial hotel-operations expenses, and the rental pool means owners don’t fully control how the unit is used.
These traits put condotels outside Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac warrantability rules, so conventional banks won’t finance them. They require a non-QM lender that specializes in investor product.
How condotels apply at Total Quality Lending
Total Quality Lending finances condotels under two programs:
- DSCR (investor): max 75% LTV on purchase, 65% on refinance, max loan $1.5M
- Prime Time (primary, second home, or investment): max 85% LTV, max loan $2.5M
On DSCR, qualifying income is the property’s rental cash flow (long-term lease, short-term rental data, or AirDNA report). TQL’s in-house condo-doc review team verifies the HOA structure, rental pool terms, and litigation status — the same review banks won’t do. See DSCR loans for the full program details.