My sister is looking into buying a condo. This would be her first purchase. If anyone has one and can give any helpful advice that would be great! Thanks!

My first house was a townhouse, it was cheap and easy to keep up with. There are extra dues usually that pay for upkeep and lawn mowing, that sort of thing. Ours included garbage pick up and snow removal too.

The thing we didn't like was that there was no privacy. An end unit would help with that of course. We had a neighbor who abused hiw wife and kids and we had to call the police on him, plus they had a big loud dog.

The dues you pay will be considered when she applies for a loan too, so she night not be able to afford as much with buying a condo.

ANd read the rules, some are so stupid, but you have to follow them!

HTH! Good luck on her first house, it's a good way to get started!

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Thanks for the tips!

condos can depriciate in value instead of increase because often people move and then rent it. you end up with a development with lots of renters and renters don't care for the property and common areas as well as owners. also, mortgage rates are usually a bit higher on loans for a condo.

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All the cool babies are wearing cloth!

Con would be the parking for me. If you live near cold snowy or rainy weather, walking from your assigned parking spot to your condo could be far.

Noisy neighbors is another con, also the board of directors sometimes do nothing when you complain. I had a townhouse and have lived through it.

I would suggest going by there and parking. Go inside the interior halls and hangout a while, see what you hear and see. Go by at night, day and weekend.

I am not a big fan of condos either but, for a FTHB it is a going starting point.

She can ease into homeowner responsibilities slowly b/c she won't have to mow, shovel snow and do outside home repairs! So thats a plus!!

Cons would be condos have a high turnover rate as far a ppl go, and they are usually renters that are in them. No privacy and ppl stealing your parking space also suck. Also, I would suggest going to your local PD or Sheriffs office and getting the calls that go out to those condos as well. It might help to know about noisy partying neighbors or car break-ins, that sorta thing!!

It is a good way to start homeownship though. Congrats to your sister on her first purchase!

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Vicki


TLJ Women united in Spirit!

We have a condo. We like it ok but would prefer (next time we buy) to have more private space/yard/really wish we had a garage! Ours are set up as "quadraville" or 4-plexes, everyone has a corner house so that is nice, I don't really like the townhouse style myself. Parking is only annoying to me when I have groceries to bring in since we are on the "back" side of the building but we do have more privacy and our porch doesn't face the parking area so that works out ok for us. We do have some silly rules ( you get to read them all before you agree to buy) like only black trash bags (?who cares?), & we can't grill which sucks but then I'd rather not have some numb-nut burn down our building because they can't think to pull the grill away from the building either!
I think a lot of the good or bad depends on the management/condo board though. We are limited to 10% rentals (of the total # of units here) at any given time unless you were renting before they enacted that rule ( then you are grand-fathered in and can continue to rent out your home)

Pros:
No yard work, nicely manicured lawns, pool with all the maintenance, no shoveling, trash picked up, etc
Lower home insurance
No outside work to do: gutters, tree removal, siding is washed, all outside repairs are done.
We have firewalls so no noise from our neighbors unless they are nailing something to an adjoining wall

Cons:
condo fees every month (offsets the insurance savings)
silly rules like black trash bags only....lol
possibility of paying higher dues or losing current things/perks because of items voted on by others.
EX: last year they wanted to put in stone patios behind all the screen porches which would have cost us another $40-ish a month on top of our regular dues, many people had already put them in with their own $$ though so it got voted down.....also the pool cost more to operate this year because of new city rules on how often testing has to be done, etc which caused some to want to shut it down rather than pay any-more for it.
*Any given item /issue may be important to you but it won't be to someone else.*

HTH
-Lori

Be sure to choose the location very carefully - my SIL & BIL own a condo in a not so great area (the area in general is good, but the specific loaction of the condo is behind an apartment complex and you have to go through the complex to get to the condo, next to railroad tracks and under power lines) that has been on the market for over a year now and they can not sell it. Right now their asking price is BELOW what they owe on it. They have not had any luck trying to rent it either. They had to have the first tenant evicted after she strung them along about buying it but could not qualify for a mortgage.

Always check to see how many of the condos are owner occupied compared to rental units. The best situation is to buy with a low number of rentals, because rentals are never maintained as nicely and that brings down the value of all the units. Checking with the Police Dept. on number of calls to the complex is another great idea.

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"Yesterday is but a vision, and tomorrow is only a dream. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a dream of hope." Anonymous

"Your candle does not lose it's light by lighting another candle" Generosity

Have the courage to be yourself.

Our starter home was a condo. It was great because it had a two car garage then you walked into your patio then your two story condo. We bought it at $72,000 and sold it three years later for $112,000. That was 15 years ago and they are now going for over $300,000. I sure wish we had held onto it and rented it out. For us the worst thing was our next door neighbor that had a teenage son that would have very loud long parties when the mother went out of town. Housing prices are so high here now that if we were just starting out we could not even afford a condo now.