House vs. condo vs. renting

[sinclair]

Anyone own and live in a condo? How do you like it? Have the dues gone up much over the years? I'm thinking of selling my house to downsize.

My main concern is association dues and how much they could rise over time. A relative who lived in his first condo for nearly 40 years says his monthly dues started around $50 and had jumped to $450 (!) by the time he left (he's in a different condo now). Special assessments are also possible and seem scary.

Also, if anyone has thoughts on how to become a happy apartment renter, I'm open to the idea. My main problems have been trouble finding a small 1BR, because so many are 2BR and larger, and the ones I'm seeing are pretty ugly.

[Madsen]

Could you buy a townhouse or something similar in town that would be kind of in-between a condo and a house?

[rose]

I rent a condo. It's been great. I have owned three homes, retired and moved to a different city. Decided to rent for a year to see if I liked it. Have been renting 9 years. I lived in a 2 bd 2 ba apt in a large well-run complex for seven years. I did fine -- better than expected as a renter. Enjoyed not having yard work, though I used to like my yard. But found myself with new interests and didn't miss it. Easy to leave for a month long vacation, etc. Then 2 years ago I decided I wanted to live walking distance to downtown. And I liked some condo's there. I looked on Craig's and found a 1 bd condo on a walking trail, near the river and walking distance to downtown. Perfect. My rent is much less than it would cost to buy a condo here even without the monthly fees. With the monthly fees added in, buying would be a LOT more expensive. I have covered secure parking, nice surroundings, stability in neighbors. All the benefits of a condo without being committed to ownership and for less money. So check Craig's list for condo's for rent. I like renting. I'm retired --not anchored to job or a community. Like the freedom.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I kind of seeing buying condos as the worst of both worlds. Being stuck somewhere without having full control of stuff. What if you have extremely noisy neighbors or something? f you have a single family house, you don't share walls at least and can install soundproofing as a last resort. If you rent you can just move (you might have to wait until your lease is up, but those last a year at most). The whole fees going up is another worst of both worlds thing too it seems. As is relying on an external party for outside maintenance in a way (what if they are negligent in this? you can't just move like a renter). Now if all this is worked out to your satisfaction in the contract (and thus you have some legalese to fall back on) then it could work out.

The problems you mention with renting really don't exist here. Some of the rental stock is poor (and some landlords are bad) but then so is some of the housing stock! Lots of 1 bedrooms and quite a lot of studios for rent. And even paying more for a nice rental is in no way, shape, or form comparable in price to buying (we're talking costing multiples more in monthly payments to buy even after taxes). So yea, happy enough renter. And I really do like the place I rent, it's perfect for me.

[iris lily]

I agree with Apathetic, I've been turned off of condos for the reasons she cites.

It's a renter's market in most places--where are you where that doesn't exist?I think that you may pay a bit of a premium to rent for the trade off of freedom--you can pick up and move if you don't like where you are with the only liability being your lease.

It's just an alternate point of view. The condo form of real estate is so enmeshed in our society that they aren't going away, but I think they've got inherent problems that I wouldn't like.I'm just not going to sink a lot of money into a property I can't control maintenance on.

Now, if you are talking about your condo being a small percentage of your next worth, then it might be ok.

[SoSimple]

After seeing a number of threads like this over the years, the conclusion I've come to is that it really depends on two things: your current needs and where you are actually living.

I've owned and rented. For DH and myself right now, renting is the only sensible choice - we have been highly mobile and I seriously doubt we're going to settle down anytime soon. Buying anything is completely out of the question for that reason. So our current needs dictate "rent". The other half of the equation is "where you live". We have a small detached cottage that sits behind our landlady's house. It's perfect. No neighbors other than what we'd have if we were actually in our own single house.

Alas, all good things come to an end and my work dictates a move, so I've been apartment hunting. (We will, for a while, have both the cottage and an apartment). I looked as extensively as time would allow and was hoping for an apartment over a garage or a similar set-up to what we currently have, but no dice (unless I wanted to live out in the middle of nowhere). So I went with an apartment that sits over the "show" apartment, is an end unit (no neighbors on that side), has a hallway on the other side (bordered by the living room/kitchen), no upstairs neighbors, and has only one neighbor at the back of the apartment (shared wall). However, that one shared wall is where the bathrooms and kitchen are, so no worries about noise really. Quality of maintenance has yet to be determined, but although it's an older complex it's in decent shape and it looked well-kept. You can tell a lot about the upkeep of a complex from the way the grounds look away from the rental office. These looked well-maintained if unimaginative.

Anyway, it works for us because it's the only smart choice. We'd be really stuck if we'd bought a house like we were thinking of doing a couple of years back. Having the flexibility to move on (almost) a moment's notice is a very good thing in this economy.

[Glo]

Speaking as someone who has owned homes for more than 40 years, if I had to do it all over again, I'd simply rent. My cousin ran the numbers once and found that renters come out ahead. I would definitely rent a house; apartments are not for me as you have no control over neighbors who live behind the wall. We lived in an apartment recently for 8 months when we moved; it was awful.

[jp1]

I've never lived in a condo, but have known plenty of people who have, including my parents for 18 years after dad retired. They loved their place. Older (1970) building that was solid but occasionally needed expensive maintainence like new central a/c unit, new roof, gut re-do of the elevator, but the condo board were responsible so my parents never got hit too bad with special assessments. Certainly no worse then similar type expenses they'd've likely faced living in an older house.

Mostly they liked and got along with their neighbors. One thing to consider, though, is that the biggest differences seemed to be intergenerational. The older residents wanted to keep costs down as much as possible so they resisted things like lobby upgrades, but the younger residents wanted to spend association money on stuff like that because they were looking to increase the overall value of the building and their investments.

Thinking about condo dues going from $50 to $450 over 40 years, that doesn't seem particularly bad. Much of that would be from inflation. For instance from 1965 to 2005 $50 becomes $310. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ The extra $160 would likely be the fact that the building was now 40 years older and probably needed more maintainence.

As far as finding decent rentals goes, I agree, there's a lot of crap out there no matter where you live. We rent a very nice, new, well equipped place, but we pay more rent then the bargain basement price for our area. I don't know about other places but we live in a coastal urban area so there are lots of renters like us who think it's worthwhile to rent and are willing to pay for a quality place. We've done the math and still think renting makes a lot more sense for us compared to purchase prices here and investment income from the money not tied up in buying a place. YMMV.

[Spartana]

After seeing a number of threads like this over the years, the conclusion I've come to is that it really depends on two things: your current needs and where you are actually living.



I agree. Alot depends on your circumstances, personality and your future. For instance I found that I prefer to rent as I absolutely HATE all the work and expense involved with home ownership. I hate yardwork and home repairs and maintenance. I hate paying for all the extra insurance coverage I need - fire, wildfire, flood, earthquake and personal liability coverage. I hate to deal with the constantly increasing property taxes, utilities, and the constant worry about something big breaking or my house being destroyed in a natural disaster that isn't covered by the many insurance policies I have. But mainly I hate that I can't just up and leave if things go south in my 'hood or with the housing market. Selling is a hassle and a big expense - especially if the quaint area you bought into eventually turns to a skanky gang ridden crack 'hood years later. I like that I can just pack my things and move when ever I want. I also like that a large bulk of my money isn't tied up in a house. It's accessible when ever I need it.

I also don't like the expense of condo ownership. Have heard many horror stories about association dues increasing substancially to cover very costly unexpected repairs, law suits, foreclosed (and there for non-paying) units, etc... in addition to having to deal with close neighbors, crazy assoc. boards and their ever changing rules, and not being able to decide for myself what I want to spend my money on in terms of home improvements. In some cases, when the condo owner couldn't pay the increased monthly dues, the condo board put a lien on their unit and forced them to sell to recoop that money. I'm sure their are some laws that don't allow this but I know in my Mom's senior condo CC&Rs, they could force you out if you didn't pay.

So renting a small, easy care place would be my ideal set up. But, because I have dogs, I found that impractical so bought instead. So my lifestyle was more important in my decsion then finances or other factors. And I will sell it once the dogs are gone and rent again - but that's what works best right now.

[Spartana]

I just wanted to add that in the past week I have heard 3 finanicial advisors (Suze Orman being one of them) telling people that they should consider renting for all their lives rather than buying because buying is such a bad investment now. I totally disagree. While I personally think renting is great for someone like me, I still think that buying a modest, affordable home as your residence rather than an investment, living there for a fairly loing period of time, and not using it as a personal bank is a better way to go financially than renting.

[Polliwog]

I bought my townhouse almost 7 years ago. Looking back, I definitely would have closely examined the financials of the homeowners association. Had I done that, I probably would not have bought the townhouse. It turns out that there was a lot of deferred maintenance and no reserves which meant increasing dues and taking out a loan to fix all the roofs and paint all the homes, etc. Having said this, I do love all the mature trees and growth, along with a golf course view (no houses to look out on).

I continually think about renting for the same reasons that Spartana mentioned earlier: maintenance, and the possibility of losing my home in a common disaster (think earthquake) in SoCal. But my mortgage is less than rent would be for me, so renting doesn't seem such a good idea at present. If home prices come back up, I may sell. It's a ongoing question for me.

[jennipurrr]

Hi, I was on the old forum and finally registered for the new one.

My main concern is association dues and how much they could rise over time. A relative who lived in his first condo for nearly 40 years says his monthly dues started around $50 and had jumped to $450 (!) by the time he left (he's in a different condo now). Special assessments are also possible and seem scary.


I own several rental properties and two of them are condos...so I have a different perspective than some. I think you have to look at the same financial considerations with buying a house and then also carefully review the strength of the condo association. Condos make sense in some scenarios. You just have to weigh your pros and cons. I told DH that if he dies (and our big dogs died, oh no, this is making me sad) that I would move into one of our condos and sell our house with the ginormous yard. It is a great compromise...I could have my cats, the association keeps up the pool, the bushes, etc and in my scenario it would be cheaper than renting even factoring in the dues.

Re: dues...I think $40 to $450 over 40 years is not that horrendous. What did the property tax, light bill, etc increase in that same time? I'd guess they were probably around the same percentage...generally just inflation. Increases are definitely something you have to account for. In the 6 years I have owned a condo, my dues have gone up about $10 in one, and the other $25. You never know with new construction either, sometimes it can be a dream bc everything is new and expense free, and then you could have shoddy construction and have crazy problems. I have a friend who bought a townhouse new and they have been fighting the builder for several years over mudslide and drainage issues...a complete mess that couldn't be predicted moving in...but it could happen in single family neighborhood or condominium construction also.

I think what is more important than the physical building in any new complex, is the strength of the association and of the owners themselves. Are there unsold units? How many? Has the developer held out units because they couldn't sell? How many units does the developer still own? If it is a large number the developer may have control over the board by majority - which is a bad thing. Any foreclosures? How current are current owners on the dues? Is the board aggressively going after back dues? If they aren't that is a bad sign too.

[simplelife4me]

Agree with Spartana.

[Spartana]

Thank you all for the info and insight. After much thought, I've decided against the condo. The move I'm considering would be a big enough change by itself. I think renting might ease the transition. And maybe I'll even like it.

One thing you might try if you can afford it, is to just rent a vacation apt (or house) for a month or two in the area you are thinking about before making a desicion. It'll give you a feel for renting vs. owning and for what city life is like before selling your place in the country. I think that trying something out before you make a big transition is always the way to go. I know many people who have made drastic lifestyle changes without trying them out before hand and have really regretted it. People who sold off everything to move to a remote island, or sail around the world, or be full time RVers and absolutely hated it. If they had just tried the "dream life" for a bit beforehand they might have known it wasn't for them. Reminds me of an old Albert Brooks movie (Lost In America") about a couple who sell everything, buy a giant RV to travel the country so that they could go "touch Indians", and then hate it approx. 30 minutes after they start.

[floresjackie8]

My first time and I achieved all I wanted to, so exceeding my expectations, very intense, but very profitable.



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[LuvThemRoses]

Your taste and location have much to do with an intelligent decision. Realtors are a good source of information in the particular area that you are living in. No matter where you are, or what your circumstance is, this is a major decision that you should make with the all the facts sorted out.