When searching all over the region for a home, we found buying a condo to be the best way to get a home in a nice area and decent square footage for the money at the time. There can be benefits to condo living.
• Community is one. Many people like the thought that there are neighbors close around them that have a general interest in the security of the community.
• Outside maintenance is typically taken care of though your homeowners association dues, also referred to as HOA dues. Typically this covers yard maintenance outside of private fenced areas, street lighting, and other common areas that they may have like a pool, tennis court, playground or clubhouse.
• Hazard insurance, to my understanding is usually covered by HOA dues. If the siding and roofs are considered “common areas”, owned by the HOA, then the insurance should be covered by the HOA.
Just because a condo is less expensive to buy than a single family home that is somewhat comparable, does not mean that it will actually be cheaper or that it will be easier to qualify for a loan. Often, lenders will take into consideration the HOA dues in addition to the mortgage. For example, assuming a loan amount was approximately $7 per thousand; if your HOA dues are $150 per month, you may want to mentally add just over 20k to the purchase price of the condo to get kind of an idea how much you’re spending.
When you live in a condo, be prepared for condo politics. It is a very good idea to attend HOA meetings so you are aware where your dues are going, and what projects need to be done. It’s a great way to meet your neighbors too. Not everyone always agrees on where the priority is for the HOA dues. At our condo, we had dying grass due to broken sprinklers. We needed to buy some new ones. We also needed new roofs on all the units. We had to decide whether we would continue to do roof patches for another couple years before putting on new roofs or tend to our dying green space. We also didn’t have a large reserve of money. We discussed options to take out a loan or raise the HOA dues.
I can see my husband and me one day buying a condo again. Our condo wasn’t ideal for raising young kids in. We ended up moving down the road to a single family home that was only 6 feet from our neighbors.
(Melissa is a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog)