patrick.net

Fees do go up when the board votes to raise them, happened to us a few times. HOA is not just condo specific, plenty of people live in SFH and are part of the HOA.

Usually HOA cover any maintenance or repairs to common areas or walls, fire insurance, and in our case HBO. If you are young and can avoid it, do. HOA board can be very frustrating to work with. A lot of community specific CC&R's there.

I owned two condos in Vancouver which by law have 'strata' or HOA. Thankfully, both were very responsible, and rather conservative but still maintained the buildings in A1A shape. My experience seemed to be the minority however. Many buildings would not maintain their buildings properly due to cheapness of residents or investors and then everyone would be shocked when the buildings had major failures due to deferred maintenance such as elevators, pools, glass curtain walls, etc. and then have to hit every condo with a huge assessment, some over 100K/unit. My last condo had a 400+ maintenance fee. It covered building insurance, elevator insurance/maintenance contract, concierge, gas for the fireplace, etc. plus some going to a rainy day fund. I thought it was 400/month well spent. OTOH, yes you do have regular maintenance with a home. The amounts you spend purely depends on the current condition of the property but even if new, there are still things that can and do go wrong. The main difference is that you can control how you chose to maintain your property and what types of improvements you feel are necessary to make. In this way you have more control. With a condo, you are stuck with the decisions of the board and voting members but you also don't have to do much if any of the actual work. With a SFH without a HOA either you do the work or you can hire it out, but again, you have that choice.
I am now back in a SFH without a HOA and doubt I would do the condo/HOA again, but there are advantages to both.

More than the fee, you should avoid the HOA. I would hope no fee no HOA, but you never know.
If you think you would be paying 100 and something "K" over the life of your loan to a do nothing organization. Better think again, they can foreclose on your house quicker than the bank, over things like, not paying, the on a whim, high assessment fees, or fines for petty shit like, you parked a van in your drive way over night with a magnetic sign on it. They sent you notice to pay a $50.00 fine, but you thought they were joking. They put it on the back burner and never mention it again for about 26 months then hit you up for $12K after daily compounded interest.

Anyone intentionally living some where with a HOA, deserve all of the grief get. It takes a special want to be pampered son of a bitch, to want to pay someone to tell them how to live.

My experience with HOA's is not a pleasant one.

When I bought my condo in 2002, the fees were $170/month. When I sold in 2009, they were $320/month. I was told that many complexes start with low fees to entice buyers but are unrealistic on setting aside money for reserves, so they have to up the fees later to make up for it (I bought my condo when the complex was relatively new).

They were also stupid about spending money. Some of the garage doors in the complex were delaminating, but instead of fixing the few that needed it, they replaced all of them and then made us replace the door openers. Also, one board member wanted windows in his garage door so that became an 'option'. So, some got it and some didn't. So they complex looks dumb now with mismatched doors.

Of course they denied my request to replace the rear windows in my condo from fixed pane to crank-out ones. Like that was more important (in the back yard) than how the garage doors look?

They repainted long before I thought it was necessary, but left other eye sores that I thought should have been taken care of sooner.

The HOA also became like the Gestapo. They outlawed skateboard riding and even videotaped kids that were violating the policy. They became very anti-kid in general.

Another issue that is growing is the fact that when people stop paying their mortgages, they stop paying their HOA dues as well. Guess who makes up for that? Correct; the responsible people paying their dues. The HOA can put a lien on the delinquent homeowner's property, but there's no money leftover at foreclosure time when the sales price is lower than the loan amount(s). The HOA is not going to get anything from the bank.

I am a conservative spender and I want to decide what gets upgraded, what gets fixed and what gets replaced. In that case, an HOA doesn't work as they are in full control. Its like the government spending your tax dollars.

Our board members were such a-holes that the management company actually dumped us. No joke. I was at the board meeting when this was announced.

Not all HOA's are the same, but Lord willing I'll never live in a condo again.

Thanks for all the tips:

These HOA boards sound horrible. Seems like the best bet is to go with the single family home and set aside money each month for future home repairs.

one other note:
HOA fee is NOT a tax write off. But interest on a mortgage is. So u are better off paying more for a SFH in that regard. Especially if you are handy and can repair things yourself and mow your own lawn. Or even if you simply 'hire your own help' you have more control than with HOA.

save yourself the grief - just buy a SFH with no HOAs and low maintenance.

HOAs are ridiculous. my cousin lives in a 1-bedroom condo in the bay area (pleasant hill, ca.), and his HOAs keep getting increased. last i checked, he was paying like 325. to make matters worse, he paid 160k for his unit (2008), and now they're selling his same unit for ~90k. he's been able to get a principle reduction.

he once told me that the board decided to put in a bunch of speed bumps (undulations) to stem the flow of traffic. so after dumping an obscene amount of money into all these new, unecessary speed bumps, driving through the condo has become burdensome, almost joke-like.

Though I'd personally choose a house with no HOA, there are some legitimate benefits to an HOA. $300/mo doesn't really cost $300/mo.

The fee often includes water and garbage and some insurance, meaning your additional insurance would be less. So, right there, you could easily be saving $100+ each month.

Associations also generally handle all of the exterior maintenance and repairs, including landscaping, paint, pest/dry-rot repairs, and the roof. Sometimes even windows.

Point is, over time, a lot of that extra money you pay each month pays itself back with the costs of repairs and maintenance that they cover. For a lot of people, the benefit of not having to worry about all of that stuff is worth a little money each month.

Don't go with a HOA. I live in a condo in Chicago were we have an older lady who sits on the board and she has become a dictator. All of our gutters are falling down, we get flooding, and the roof was damaged by a storm last year; however, she only focuses on buying flowers for the courtyard and furniture, instead of fixing our building which is falling apart. She is constantly complaining about a urine smell in the vestibule which no one else smells, but she has had it cleaned professionally multiple times. Basically this older woman uses the Association as a dictatorship and her personal spending account. I would rather live in a cardboard box then this nightmare.

For illustration purposes there is a $289,000 condo with a $315 monthly HOA fee ($3,780/year or $113,400 for the life of a 30 year loan)

That last figure looks terrifying but when you total up the value of the money and time you'll be spending in maintaining your own SFH, it's worth it. And doesn't that include property taxes? Usually "maintenance" is common fees plus property taxes, but I'm not sure what "HOA fee" covers.

When you go to meet the condo board. before buying, feel them out as to whether they're the dictatorial type. Just as the employment-hunting cliche goes, you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you.

HOAs are generally populated with mentally ill people who usually paid one-tenth the current market value of the home and seem to want to burn money like crazy.