# Occupancy Classification

> Occupancy Classification tests whether the property can support the legal, physical, and market assumptions of the loan

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:real-estate-mortgage:collateral-underwriting:occupancy-classification` |
| Family | Collateral Underwriting |
| Domain | Technology |
| Era | Institutional Age → Agentic Age |
| Kind | metric-or-force |
| Archetype | The Tide |
| Claim layers | empirical, cultural_historical, synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory |

## What it is

Occupancy Classification is a metric or force in the Collateral Underwriting family, defined here by the function it performs in the property system rather than by label alone.

## What it actually does

Occupancy Classification tests whether the property can support the legal, physical, and market assumptions of the loan.

## Why it exists

It exists because place is unique and immovable while law, capital, information, and human lives must still coordinate around it across time.

## System mechanics

- **Who uses it:** underwriter, appraiser, investor, developer, regulator
- **Incentives:** comparability, predictive usefulness, decision speed, auditability
- **Inputs:** observations, definitions, time period, comparison set
- **Outputs:** signal, comparison, threshold, decision input
- **Dependencies:** Land, Authority, Information, Capital, Time

## Archetypal reading

- **Essence:** Occupancy Classification tests whether the property can support the legal, physical, and market assumptions of the loan
- **Gift:** Clarity about occupancy classification makes a hidden allocation of place, time, authority, value, or risk available for deliberate choice.
- **Wound / Shadow:** When occupancy classification is treated as neutral or inevitable, its costs can be shifted to people who hold less information, authority, liquidity, or mobility.
- **Failure mode:** The failure mode appears when occupancy classification is stale, opaque, mispriced, misrecorded, overextended, or applied outside the conditions that made it useful.

## Lenses

- **Personal:** Notice where occupancy classification appears as a structure in your own commitments: what is held, promised, priced, protected, excluded, or deferred?
- **Business:** Occupancy Classification reveals a handoff among information, authority, incentives, operating work, and capital. Make the owner of each handoff explicit.
- **Financial:** Occupancy Classification changes the timing, priority, comparability, liquidity, or distribution of cash flow and risk.
- **Property:** Occupancy Classification changes how a physical place can be used, valued, financed, transferred, occupied, maintained, or reclaimed.
- **Community:** Occupancy Classification can create benefits inside one parcel while exporting costs or opportunity to neighbors, institutions, or future residents.

## Divination

The Tide enters the reading through Occupancy Classification. The issue is not only what is visible; it is which map of ownership, time, risk, authority, or belonging currently governs the situation.

**Question:** What is Occupancy Classification measuring—and which important reality has been left outside the denominator?

**Guidance:** Change the denominator, time horizon, and stakeholder. If the conclusion changes, the map—not only the number—was doing the work.

## Game function

Sets or modifies a threshold; players may stress it by changing rates, time, or cash flow. Initiative 4.

## Relationships

- **Credit Score depends on Occupancy Classification.** Credit Score depends on Occupancy Classification through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Property Eligibility is governed by Occupancy Classification.** Property Eligibility is governed by Occupancy Classification through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Occupancy Classification externalizes to Project Review.** Occupancy Classification externalizes to Project Review through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Occupancy Classification constrains Mortgage Deed.** Occupancy Classification constrains Mortgage Deed through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.

## Oppositions

- Use Value versus Exchange Value
- Speed versus Diligence

## Historical lineage and regulatory context

Read Occupancy Classification through the lineage of Collateral Underwriting: earlier customary or local arrangements became recorded, standardized, financed, regulated, digitized, or contested over time.

Rules vary by jurisdiction and transaction. Use the cited primary sources as starting points and verify current local law, program guides, contracts, and professional standards before operational use.

## Visual direction

Text-free rounded-square enamel artifact for Occupancy Classification: a calibrated enamel field where one measured boundary visibly changes the exposed and submerged portions of an asset; vitreous midnight enamel, blackened steel, warm brass, copper accents, mortgage-paper cream, deep green, slate, and sky blue.

## Engine output / Sentinel handoff

The generative interpretation above is preserved as Engine Output. Sentinel factors: jurisdiction-specific rules, factual uncertainty. These factors request contextual review; they do not delete or silently rewrite the candidate.

## Research / provenance

- [Fannie Mae Selling Guide](https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/media/document/pdf/selling-guide-february-4-2026) — Fannie Mae; loan eligibility, underwriting, appraisal, delivery.
- [Freddie Mac Single-Family Seller/Servicer Guide](https://guide.freddiemac.com/) — Freddie Mac; loan eligibility, Loan Product Advisor, servicing.
- [Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice](https://appraisalfoundation.org/pages/uspap) — The Appraisal Foundation; appraisal ethics, development, reporting, review.
