Is My Property Covered by the CARES Act?

Whether your property is covered by the CARES Act depends on two things: for a home, whether the mortgage is federally backed; for a rental, whether the unit participates in a federal housing program or sits under a federally backed loan. The forbearance request window and the 120-day eviction moratorium both closed in 2020. One protection has no expiration date and still applies in 2026: landlords of covered rentals must give tenants at least 30 days’ notice before filing an eviction for nonpayment of rent.¹

Is Your Home Mortgage Federally Backed

The CARES Act’s homeowner protections applied to any loan secured by a lien on residential property built for one to four families, as long as the loan carried a federal connection. The statute covered mortgages that were:²

Insured by the FHA, including standard FHA loans and Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (reverse mortgages)
Guaranteed or insured by the VA
Made, insured, or guaranteed by the USDA for rural housing
Purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac
Guaranteed under HUD’s Section 184 (Native American) or Section 184A (Native Hawaiian) programs

A conventional loan a bank originated and kept in its own portfolio, never selling it to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, is not federally backed and never fell under the CARES Act. Many borrowers can’t tell which category their loan lands in, because loans are routinely sold after closing.

How to Check

Fannie Mae maintains a free loan lookup tool that returns a match if Fannie Mae owns your mortgage.³ Freddie Mac has an equivalent tool.⁴ If neither returns a hit, the loan may still be backed through FHA, VA, or USDA. Ask your servicer directly, or search the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) database, which tracks servicer assignments for most U.S. mortgages.⁵

Is Your Rental a Covered Dwelling

A rental unit qualified as a “covered dwelling” if the property either participated in a federal housing program or carried a federally backed mortgage.¹ The programs are the ones listed as “covered housing programs” under the Violence Against Women Act, and the list is broader than most renters expect.⁶ Covered programs include:

Public housing run by local housing authorities
Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers and Project-Based Vouchers
Project-Based Rental Assistance under Section 8
Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) properties
Section 202 and Section 811 housing for elderly residents or people with disabilities
USDA rural housing under Sections 514, 515, and 516
Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA)
McKinney-Vento homeless assistance programs
HOME Investment Partnerships
Housing Trust Fund properties
HUD-VASH and other veterans’ housing programs

A rental with a federally backed mortgage is covered even without any housing subsidy tied to the tenant. That means many privately owned buildings qualify because the owner’s financing is FHA-insured, VA-guaranteed, USDA-backed, or held by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Renters in these properties are protected without knowing it.

How to Check as a Renter

You don’t control the mortgage, so start by asking the landlord or property manager whether the building participates in a federal housing program or has a federally backed loan. Read the lease for references to HUD, USDA, LIHTC, or Section 8. If the landlord won’t say, local housing authorities sometimes keep lists of federally assisted properties in their area.

What Coverage Still Gets You in 2026

The 120-day eviction moratorium ran only from March 27 to July 24, 2020.⁷ What outlasted it is the 30-day notice rule. The CARES Act requires landlords of covered rentals to give tenants at least 30 days’ notice to vacate before filing an eviction for nonpayment of rent, and that provision was written without an expiration date.¹

A February 2026 Federal Register notice from the USDA confirmed that the CARES Act’s 30-day notice requirement for nonpayment of rent “is still in effect” for covered properties, even as the agency rescinded its own parallel regulatory version.⁸ Courts have generally read the rule to require 30 days’ notice before the eviction is filed, not merely before a physical removal.

This matters because many state laws let a landlord file an eviction after only three to five days’ notice for missed rent. If the property is a covered dwelling, the federal 30-day floor overrides any shorter state timeline. A tenant evicted from a covered property without receiving 30 days’ notice may have a defense to the eviction action.

What Homeowner Coverage Meant During the Pandemic

If your mortgage was federally backed, the CARES Act let you pause payments for up to 180 days and request a second 180-day extension, for a maximum of 360 days of forbearance.⁹ No extra interest, late fees, or penalties beyond the original loan terms could be charged during forbearance. The forbearance request window has since closed, but knowing your loan was covered still matters for how missed payments were resolved and for the loss-mitigation options attached to federally backed loans generally.¹⁰

A common fear was that borrowers would owe every missed payment as a single lump sum when forbearance ended. For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans that was never the case; the Federal Housing Finance Agency stated directly that no lump sum was required at the end of forbearance.¹¹ Servicers were required to offer one of several structures:¹²

A repayment plan, adding a portion of the missed amount to each monthly payment until the balance is caught up
A deferral or partial claim, moving the missed payments to the end of the loan or into a subordinate lien repaid at refinance, sale, or payoff
A loan modification that restructures the loan terms and folds missed amounts into the balance, sometimes extending the loan’s life
Reinstatement, paying all missed payments at once; for most government-backed loans, servicers could not require this

The specific menu depended on the loan type. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac offered repayment plans, deferrals, and modifications. FHA, VA, and USDA each ran their own loss-mitigation frameworks, all of which included alternatives to a lump-sum payoff.

A Note on Multifamily Buildings

Properties with five or more units followed a different track. Owners with federally backed multifamily loans who were current on payments as of February 1, 2020, could request forbearance in 30-day increments, extendable twice, for a maximum of 90 days.¹³ While receiving that forbearance, owners could not evict tenants for nonpayment or charge late fees, could not issue a notice to vacate until forbearance expired, and had to give at least 30 days’ notice before requiring the tenant to leave. Those tenant protections were tied to the owner’s forbearance and applied only while it was in effect.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 9058 – Temporary Moratorium on Eviction Filings
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 9056 – Foreclosure Moratorium and Consumer Right to Request Forbearance
3
Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae Loan Lookup Tool
4
Freddie Mac. Loan Look-Up Tool
5
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Can I Tell Who Owns My Mortgage
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 34 USC 12491 – Housing Protections for Victims of Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking
7
Federal Register. Temporary Halt in Residential Evictions To Prevent the Further Spread of COVID-19
8
Federal Register. Rescinding 30-Day Notification Requirements Related to Eviction Based on Nonpayment of Rent
9
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CARES Act Forbearance and Foreclosure
10
U.S. Department of the Treasury. About the CARES Act and the Consolidated Appropriations Act
11
U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency. No Lump Sum Required at the End of Forbearance
12
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Exit Your Forbearance Carefully
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 9057 – Forbearance of Residential Mortgage Loan Payments for Multifamily Properties With Federally Backed Loans