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What are your experiences with condo ownership?
I'm deciding between home/condo ownership. A good condo/house cost roughly the same in my area. But I'm single and don't need a lot of space, so a condo makes sense. However, noise from neighbors is puts me off (a lot). Constantly hearing noise (parties, stomping, pets, etc.) would have a serious negative impact on what's supposed to be a home where you can relax and not deal with the world.
What are/were your experiences? Did the HOA do their diligence when things break or need maintenance? Are their costs reasonable considering how much is needed (time+money) to maintain a house? Was the heated parking garage worth the costs?
Imma stop right there. If you can afford a home and "all else being equal", single family home 1000000%.
As you already prioritized: Noise: want to have a house party at 2am? Want to help a friend puppy-sit and she won't stop arooo-ing? Got into a new instrument? Renovating that'll take months? Domestic drama? Drunkenness? Now think about each of those scenarios, multiply it to the number of neighbours around your condo unit because each of them could be doing these, simultaneously.
All your other questions are answered with "it extremely depends". The HOA can only be a source of pain and irritation. I can't think of a single thing they can do that you, a healthy younger guy with money cannot. No matter how good of an HOA it currently is, there's no telling what happens if/when core members move or die, or when the strata needs a special assessment.
If you need more convincing, with apologies to Star Trek DS9:
No, seriously, read through as many years of strata meeting minutes and voting records as your agent/lawyer can get their hands on. If that doesn't sound like fun, it isn't. But don't buy a condo without doing this homework.
You may not need the space right now, but look into appreciation rates and compare it to the condos. If you ever change living conditions, or if you ever fall on hard times and need to rent out rooms, single family homes are the way to go.
I get the hate with HOAs but I honestly do think there are some good ones. Ours organizes multiple events per year, things like a giant Easter egg hunt in our park with food trucks and vendors and the community wide garage sale (they use the budget to advertise and again bring in food trucks). Yeah there are negatives, I have to get approval for a raised flower bed, or if I want to buy a playground set it has to be made of wood. But it does help keep the neighborhood looking nice to have rules. We’ve lived in communities without them, and while most houses will do there best to look nice, there’s always a few that just go down hill.
As for the house vs condo question, agreed with the privacy aspect. That said, having less maintenance responsibility is a big positive towards a condo. Roof, structure, grounds, siding are all things you don’t need to worry about. But condos usually have higher association fees that are more likely to increase annually, and mortgage rates are higher.
Additionally, if you ever think you might want to turn your property into a rental when you’re ready to move, a lot of condo communities now have minimum owner-occupancy ratios (ie only X% of units can be rentals). Just something to consider.
As for my experience, we own 1 condo and 2 single family homes. 1 house is from 1980 and has needed a large amount of maintenance in the 4 years we’ve owned it (roof, windows, sliding door, drainage - all water issues). Our second house is a 2001 and so far hasn’t needed anything major. Our condo has needed some interior stuff (we had a leak that drilled into the bottom unit, paid for repairs to ours and the other guys unit). The condo association has raised the fee once in the 2 years we’ve owned it, and we frequently have issues with them not shoveling sidewalks or putting down salt in the winter. They’ve been promising to replace the deck for 2 years now and there’s been no movement on that.
I’m a +1 for OP’s opinion on HOAs. Mine was good for 20 years, not a peep about anything. After covid the original managers left and now I’m suddenly getting tons of letters wanting to change things. An example of the good work they’re doing: about 90% of the houses here (not mine included) have more cars than spots in the garage resulting in all houses needing to park in the driveway. There’s an HOA motion to start enforcing a rule we apparently have to ban work trucks and parking in the driveway. The letter said this was the majority complaint. I really doubt this is a majority complaint given so many people here’s car-to-garage spot ratio.
Ban parking in the driveway?? Yikes, that's ridiculous.
Ban work trucks!? What reality do these people live in? What if you need work done on your house? What if part of my job requires a work truck?
No, no, these houses are for office workers only…
Definitely one of the reasons I'm considering a condo. I can live with the fees. It's just that the neighbors being so variable is what puts me off. Again, it's very similar to the HOA situation. You can have good or bad ones. But you can research the HOA, not so much the neighbors.
As someone who owns a regular ol home and not a condo -- you still have to deal with neighbors if you buy a freehold. Unless you're out in the country.
Oh sure, but you're not sharing walls with them. I guess you have potential for different kinds of problems. Loud pets 24/7 in their yards, revving their motorcycle at 2AM, etc.
As a townhouse owner in a big city (so, not exactly the same as a freestanding single family house owner) there are still raucous parties with DJs half a block away, street fairs also with DJs, car alarms (thankfully only for about 30 seconds) and yapping backyard dogs. We never hear our next door neighbors within our own house. Maybe if we were out in the boons we could escape all bothersome noise.
This is true. I live in a condo and our HOA is fairly benign. It mostly concerns itself with things like repainting lines in the parking lot or replacing boilers.
All the things they ask of us are things I'd consider normal - don't leave things lying out on the lawn, don't make noise at late hours, everyone gets assigned parking spots, etc.
For the $250 I pay every month in dues I get a lawn that's always mowed, a swimming pool and community area that I can use, a furnace/water/sewer system that's always maintained, and professionals assessing the property every year. I consider that to be pretty worthwhile!
That said, definitely go to your HOA meetings. You don't need to be overinvolved, but make a point to go there and hear what they're up to.
Just want to slip in here. Insurance with condos is convoluted. You will not have the same maintenance responsibilities and neither will your neighbors. But their maintenance/hygiene has an impact on you.
Case in point: my partner owned a condo about an hour south of where we live. When she moved in our plan was to rent it out. Within two weeks of getting her place cleared out an upstairs neighbor’s bidet attachment failed in the middle of the night. Spilling water into her walls, floors, and ceiling. Through independent lawyers, insurance, HOA the consensus was that repairing the damage was her responsibility because the water entered her unit and her neighbor was not liable.
10k in damages and a month of her driving back and forth dealing with contractors and we decided selling was gonna be more valuable than maintaining a rental. Yeah we got a check from insurance to cover the repairs. But do you want to be in the hook if your neighbor doesn’t maintain their unit?
Thank you for pointing this out. I assumed issues like that would be handled by the HOA or insurance and all you'd have to do is make sure they cover all damages. Having the responsibility fall back on you feels ridiculous.
Even if they do it is an inconvenience. A former brother-in-law of mine fell asleep while filling a bath tub. Flooded several floors of condos below. Even if the insurance/HOA process was smooth, I doubt his neighbors were very happy with having significant unscheduled renovations.
If you can get your hands on a depreciation report or a similar document that estimates the life expectancy of things like the building's water heater and elevators, it'll help you guess if you could be on the hook for a share of those significant costs within the next few years. My city requires condos to make these reports readily available to buyers, but if you can't get one, reading through a few years worth of minutes should give you a good idea of the building's condition. If it doesn't, that means that the owners don't know or care.
I've noticed that a lot of condos that hit the market in my city that are listed a little below what you might expect for the area are priced that way because of one or more very large special assessments being levied on the owners.
To your point about partying and drunkenness, it's worth knowing if the building allows for AirBnbs or other short-term rentals. Even if their bylaws forbid them, check a few sites for listings anyway, especially if you live in a tourist destination. My strata doesn't allow for them, but I see enough people carrying luggage in and out of the building to suspect there are at least a couple. It hasn't been a big deal for us, but if half of your floor is a hotel you're going to have a bad time.
100% this. My condo was a critical stepping stone to my eventual custom home build many years later but if I could have afforded to skip that step and could go back in time I would skip it 100 times out of 100. I see condo ownership as a necessary evil in a world where home ownership is harder and harder to achieve. If you can avoid it, I would suggest you do.
Thanks for your insight! And I appreciate the DS9 (big fan) reference haha
But yes, all of these things are very variable. The "dice-roll" with a ~$300k+ condo worries me and how hard it's to change places when when you have a mortgage. I guess, ultimately, it really comes down to what you've mentioned as "all else being equal". "Can I afford my peace of mind?" Meaning, can I afford not being surround by 4 neighbors wall-to-wall while also being able to cover all the maintenance fees (roof, HVAC, appliances, etc.). I hear that a percentage of the mortgage should be set aside for maintenance. That might be roughly equal to what an HOA would cost, but again, highly variable.
I remember bad experiences with an HOA when I lived with my parents in a townhouse. The fees were 1/3 of the mortgage. They also charged ~$300 to get the necessary papers they're supposed to provide when selling. After that I roughly understand of what to keep an eye on when choosing a place with an HOA (special assessments, etc.). I also remember noisy neighbors. Music/karaoke, children (the stomping, oh the stomping), weed. Granted, it's not their fault, that's just normal noise of people living. Can't really make complaints about those sort of things.
I understand the "I don't want to worry about maintence / groundskeeping / upkeep etc" angle...I really do. When we started out, we had a condo as well because we were kids a coupla' kids dressed up in an adult trench coat. What did I know about painting and elevtors and roof top water proofing and gardening, amirite?
Well, turns out, we had to learn all about it. Because these are things that still needed to be done, but as a collective that has run out of funds and zero trust.
Look, did you super enjoy group projects in school because you can just fold your arms and let the other kids do all the work, and you're fine as long as they get you a C-? Or did you fret and fume about the project and end up doing most of the work because of the freeloaders?
If you are in the latter camp, then, as your parents' townhouse situation will tell you, it's like a group project, except you all have to have monthly meetings and everyone yelling at each other and accusing each other of embezzlement, and there could actually be kickbacks and embezzlement, and elderly people on fixed income voting NO as a block because they can't afford a special assessment and would rather the entire building fall apart in 10 years once they're gone, colluding with the block that are just here to avoid a special assessment in order to sell the condo to a greater fool .
You'd still have ALL the maintenance headaches, but you won't get to choose your own contractor, your own timeline, your own budget, nor even if extremely necessary repairs get done in time.
“Everyone has their reasons. That’s what's so frightening. People can find a way to justify any action, no matter how
evilbafflingly idiotic. You can’t judge people by what they think or say, only by what they do.”If you do go that route, I would suggest you look beyond just special assessments: look for a conspicuous lack of them as well and how many meetings it took to vote on simple maintenance items. Look for failed meetings that don't meet quorum. Look for meetings that bring up items over and over again that was already voted on. Look for unit numbers near your potential unit: if they present a bunch of problems and are "a presence", you don't want to live above/below/adjacent to these people.
Buy a house. Spend that budget and hire your own contractors. If you want to, you can just copy the homework of kids' next to you and hire their guys.
Condos always seemed like you have all the disadvantages but few of the advantages of both buying a house and renting an apartment.
Indeed. Location and price, usually, are the only reasons.
I briefly looked at various condo construction and cement was mentioned as the ideal. But even then it changed the sound profile instead of masking it entirely. Definitely better than wood as @CokeCola commented.
I'm not planning to exclude a condo, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for cement construction and prefer top+corner (these would be at a premium). But this would give me more time to save up.
I saw a unit where the HOA essentially covered all utilities (including heated garage) save for electricity. This set a standard for me on what $500 HOA fee (average where I'm looking) cover. Essentially luxury at this point.
I appreciate you pointing these things out as it's helping me get a better idea of what I want and what I should look for.
In my experience, there is no "all else being equal." What do you want? A lawn, or a bar within walking distance? Where I live those options are mutually exclusive. Are you capable of keeping up with the maintenance on a house? That's a definite no for me - I'm just too lazy. The condo has been a great choice.
Condos are as different from one another as houses. I wouldn't buy into a place with upstairs neighbors without concrete ceilings. You can still hear people with that kind of construction, but the room won't shake from people walking around, like stick built apartments I've lived in. If the room isn't shaking, fans and earplugs are effective enough for sleep. For my own noise, I listen to everything with wireless noise cancelling headphones. I like it that way. Noise isolation between units will be really difficult to assess before you've lived there. When I toured my place, both it and the unit next door were for sale. If I had really been thinking, I could have brought a bluetooth speaker and tested hearing it through the walls.
But, all those statements about noise should be things you already know if you've lived in a shared building before. I don't think I'd jump straight into buying a condo if I didn't have experience with that.
Condo HOA costs only go up. Can you afford whatever it is, plus 5% every year, forever? Look at the history of increases, plus any special assessments that have ever been levied. Every shared amenity is something that can break. What are you actually responsible for in regards to your unit? My HVAC is on the roof, but it's mine. Replacing it required a crane rental. Some places will share one between multiple units.
I have owned a condo and a house and I would chose a house 100%, but there are pros and cons to both, but I'm going to focus on condos since people tend to be less familiar with them.
For condos, there are a lot of cons that I'll mention. The constant neighbors on various sides and/or ceiling and floor is a huge negative. It means having to deal with constant noise, sometimes quite awkward noises. It also means that you find yourself also trying to be extra quiet. That means no loud or even medium volume music or television watching in many cases. Parties or other gatherings can be difficult to control the volume as well. The possible inability to even have many people over due to space or parking is also a concern. Many condos are hyper strict on visitor parking and you could easily find your guests' car towed away.
The condo associations (HOA equivalent) tend to be exaggerated versions of the typical HOA in my and my friends' and family's experience. For example, I once had an official threat of a lien being put on my condo because I had a can of paint under my car port for two hours... while I was painting my condo living room. Condo associations and HOAs can all vary of course and some are supposedly nice and leave you alone, but no one I have personally known has experienced these unicorns.
Another thing to add is that Condo fees tend to be quite high in many cases because in addition to covering general maintenance and common areas, it also covers insurance for the whole property ground and structure as well as (hopefully) putting money aside for large repairs like new building roof, elevators, exterior painting and air conditioners. By the time I sold my condo, our monthly condo fee was about 80% as much as my condo mortgage as I bought it before real estate prices exploded.
There are definitely some positives to condos though. In many ways condos are like a (usually nicer) apartment that you own and have few limitations inside. If you're used to apartment living, it will feel similar except that you have more freedom, but still few of the responsibilities/headaches that can come with a single family home. You don't need to worry about the lawn maintenance, likely no worries about outside pest control and garbage pickup. You also don't have to have "real" homeowners insurance, instead you get condo insurance which is similar to renters insurance except that it covers the inside of your condo (it was super cheap for me).
I pretty want much want to "have my cake and eat it too". A living space where I mostly don't have to worry about maintenance that comes with a house, but also not to deal with constant noise from neighbors. A unicorn really. As several comments already mentioned, certain construction techniques (cement) can help with the noise, but not get rid of it outright. Unit location can definitely help by reducing the number of neighbors you're dealing with, but those units rarely becomes available and hyper sought-after.
For what its worth, I've never even been in a wood framed condo, so all my experience has been in cement block construction and it was not great. The recommendation for top floor and corner units is solid, but keep in mind that those units tend to also be higher priced for this exact reason. I think the best bet for something like this would be actually knowing someone living in one of these condo units and getting their take on the culture of the condo board and tenants as well as the general noise level to expect.
Few people like house maintenance, I surely don't. What I do like is being able to sit on my back patio in privacy or have a small gardening area for my hot peppers. Also something that I didn't cover in my other post is pets. It is difficult to have pets like a dog in a condo and some condos won't even allow you to have them. My previous condo board passed a rule, years after I lived there, that limited the allowable size of dogs to 20lb or less. My dog was 35lb and I was constantly harassed about her.
In my opinion this is potentially the most impactful, yet most difficult to anticipate factor for condo. We live in a condo as well, and our neighbor is a college kid whose parents bought the condo for them. They like to listen to loud music all day, and it comes across the wall rather easily, especially the heavy base. Complained to HoA multiple times, and several complaint letters later, nothing has changed. Now we just avoid going downstairs where the wall is relatively thin when the music is blasting, and try to deal with it.
Have you mentioned anything directly to him?
I know, I know - it could backfire badly. But sometimes people have a tendency to be dismissive of communication coming from their HOA. I know I kind of hate mine. If he's a decent kid, he might be more open to hearing it from a real person is my thinking.
Still, sorry for your luck. That really sucks.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I personally rung their doorbell and talked to them face-to-face 3 or 4 times before I finally brought it to HOA. Sure they would stop the loud music at the time, but next day it was back. And eventually I just saw no point to keep knocking on their door.
$700/mo is definitely a steal, but it sounds like you live in a lower cost of living state. But even then, considering how much it's recommended to set aside for house maintenance, it's a reasonable cost to live somewhere you enjoy. Also, not having to worry about lawn/snow alone is very convenient and saves a lot of time (and money + tools). Maintenance in general is less of a hassle or, at the very least, much less than a house.
The type of condo I'm considering is one of those high-risers (big city) instead of a townhouse type (not sure how else to describe it). In my scenario the neighbors would be higher-density.
I live in an expensive state but in the suburbs of a lower cost city. I can't speak to city condos. Best of luck!
If you're considering buying a condo, I have some suggestions.
Disclosure: my wife and I own a home + 10 condos (rental investments).
See if there are any lawsuits in the works in relation to the condo association (everyone gets sued, but there might be some extra bad red flags in there).
Ask other owners what they think of the management. Ask them what they think of the neighbors. Are the grounds of the condo association well maintained? Ask if there are any special assessments in the works (You probably don't want to get blindsided with an $x-thousand assessment or big raise in condo fees)?
Look into the finances if you can. There are metrics for how much $ should be held in reserve relative to the number of condos.
Attend a condo board meeting if possible.
Ask for the association's rules/regs. If you have a pet, some associations forbid them (unless they are a service animal and you can demonstrate that fact).
Obviously, you will have to determine who is telling you important information and who just likes to complain.
This probably sounds somewhat frightening, but the obvious upside is that someone else (management company) takes care of a lot of external stuff for you.... and there may be amenities (swimming pool, tennis court, etc.).
I bought a new condo a couple of years ago, and I really love it. I think that there are definitely frustration points with the HOA, especially when they don't really understand what's going on. I think everything you mentioned though, with the HOA and the neighbors, is super variable. If the HOA isn't good, perhaps you can convince the other owners to change companies or start handling it yourselves, but it really depends on how good your neighbors are. If you have some good neighbors, I think it makes the biggest difference.
In a condo, there is still maintenance. You're just paying someone else to do some it via fees. If you don't mind paying fees and don't want to do maintenance, you can still pay someone else to do that kind of work for you in a standalone home.
My parents live in a condo and they like the maintenance-free aspect of it, and they're at an age where doing maintenance just isn't going to happen for them anymore. I can't stand sharing walls with people, so it's not for me. The tradeoff is worth it. But that's very much a personal decision to make.
It's one of the reasons I wanted a discussion on this; help people find some answers.
I feel the same way about maintenance. I want to spend more of my free time doing things I enjoy instead (maintenance not being one of them). As @devilized mentioned, with a condo you're paying for someone else to deal with it. You could do the same with a house, but I feel like there's a "premium" cost when hiring someone. The same could be said with the HOA fees in that you're sweeping potential problems mostly under the rug and you don't necessarily know what the "premium" would be at all because you're paying, mostly, a flat rate.
There's definitely a premium to be paid to have someone come to your house to do maintenance. Maintenance at a condo will be overall cheaper due to economies of scale and overall less to maintain per person (less yard, less roof, etc). But you're also less in control over that maintenance.
My parents have had issues with this in their condo. They've requested maintenance that hasn't been done, and the request was refused (the situation that lead to the collapse at Champlain Towers in Florida isn't all that uncommon, just not usually to that severity). They've also seen things like roof replacements on other units that drained the association's reserve funds and called for special assessments (unexpected fees). That's the nature of an HOA is that you don't have much control over how your dues are spent.
I actually don't mind most home maintenance. My wife likes mowing the lawn and painting, I like carpentry and fixing broken things. Anything we don't like, we evaluate the cost of hiring it out. Overall, we spend way less than my parents do on their dues, but we also don't live in Florida where they're battered with hurricanes that cause frequent damage.