patrick.net

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.