In a recent video, we talked about all of the pros of living in a condo or a townhouse where there's an HOA that helps take care of things and all of the good things that come along with purchasing and living in a condo or a townhouse. But when there are pros, there are usually cons. And so this video, we're going to focus on the unfortunate downside of living in a condo or a townhouse.

My first con is that storage might be lacking, especially if you get an apartment-style condo where you just have maybe two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, maybe a dining area, and a kitchen. Then you have a closet to do your laundry. There's not a lot of extra storage in these apartments style condos. You might have a storage closet on an outdoor balcony or you might have a storage closet in the attached garage. Sometimes the building, you might have to go down to the basement or lower level to get into the garage. There are sometimes assigned storage cages or closets in the garage area. You might have a storage area in front of where you park your car. It really depends on the building and they're set up, but you might run out of places to put all your stuff.

So if you like to have a lot of stuff, a condo may not be your best option. A townhouse might be better, but even then sometimes storage can be lacking. Like if you got a townhouse that did not have a basement. For example, you might have a storage closet in the garage that is probably going to be where your furnace and maybe your water heater are at, but you could also store some things there. So just keep in mind that sometimes storage is limited, which can be a con when looking at condos and townhomes.

 

This is probably a pretty obvious con I don't know I didn't say at first, but when you share walls with people you don't live with things can get awkward, and not even the obvious bedroom while sharing, but maybe your neighbor is hard of hearing. And they listened to the six o'clock news every night at the highest possible volume setting that they can, which really interferes with your dinner or zoom calls that you might be having because you work from home. Maybe your next-door neighbor loves heavy metal music, and you don't, maybe they love country music and they play it at a really loud volume. And it's not your jam. These are things that can make life a little bit awkward. Maybe they're very passionate people, a couple lives next door, and they are passionate and they fight a lot. Oh, that can be awkward. So keep in mind that you may not be able to control who you share a wall with. And sometimes that can be awkward.

If you like to host parties or have get-togethers at your home, there might be limited parking available for your guests. So you are probably going to have your parking spot, whether it's in a garage or a driveway direct to your townhouse. Condos are probably going to have a garage. There might be guest parking. It might not be near your particular unit so your guests might have to walk a little bit. And the guest parking might actually be taken up by other residents in the building. So if somebody has three people living in one townhouse that has a single car garage, they might actually park additional cars of theirs in the guest parking. So parking can be at a major premium in some townhome and condo developments. Something to think about. If you like to have company over, you want to make sure that the parking situation is going to work for you and your guests. 

In the pros video, we talked about how rules can be a pro because then you know what to expect, and you know exactly what you're going to get in the community that you have invested in. However, rules can also be cons, unfortunately, and you knew that was coming because you know, there are pros and cons to everything.

For example, the homeowners association might have rules about what kind of pets you can have, how many you can have, and how much it can weigh. So when I got my dog Murphy, he was 15 pounds and they told me he was fully grown. Well, pretty sure he's over 30 pounds now, which would make him too heavy for many hos because 30 pounds is a common limit. Now I would probably because I'm a rebel, I would probably risk that and challenge anybody to weigh my fat dog. When we were out taking a walk in the development, some people might do that. You never know if I had a much bigger dog. My old dog was 60 pounds. So she would definitely not be welcomed in an HOA because she was also a pit-mix the nicest dog you've ever met in your life. But she, she didn't, she had kind of a terrier face, but she had a pit bull body. So you could just tell that she was strong. And unfortunately, a lot of hos are going to have rules on what type of breed is allowed for your pets. So pit bulls, rottweilers, sometimes German shepherds. Those are common breeds that may not be welcome in a particular association. If you don't pick up your dog poop, well the HOA is probably gonna have something to say about it because other neighbors don't want to see that when they're out taking a walk, they don't want to step in it. And it makes sense. You should pick up after yourself, but some associations take that rule and push it. And they push it far because they will do doggy DNA tests on your dog's excrement. And if they find out it was your dog and your mess that you didn't pick up, you'll get a fine for that. and I know one of the strictest rules I've ever seen, It was apartment style on the third floor in this building in west Des Moines. Were the ones who would do the doggy DNA test and find you if you didn't pick up after your dog.

And while we're talking about pets, one of the cons of living in a condo or a townhouse is that you're not really going to have a dedicated yard for your pet, which is really most important. When you have a pet dog, cats don't really care about yards usually, but if you have a dog, you're going to have to take it out to walk it to go potty every day.

 Some HOA are going to limit whether you can have motorcycles. Motorcycles might not be welcome because they make a lot of noise. They're probably not going to let you park an RV in your driveway or probably anywhere in the development. So you should find offsite parking for your camper or RV. They might even have a rule on whether or not you can park in the driveway overnight. I don't see this a lot, but I have seen it where development has a rule that your cars must be parked inside your garage and never parked in the driveway overnight.

Some HOA outlawed smoking, which seemed really strict at the time although as a real estate agent, I can tell you that that's not a bad rule when you're selling your condo, because it does make it smell a little more welcome in the common areas.

They also had a rule against roommates. So you could not rent your condo out in this particular association and you couldn't even live there and have a roommate paying your rent. Can you believe that it's a little strict? I'm not sure I understand the reason for the rule but unfortunately, I'm not the person who gets to make the rules. So if that was a place where I lived and I disagreed with it, then of course I would have to get involved with the association and see if we can overturn the rule or come up with a new compromise. That made sense for everybody living there, the woman who ended up buying the condo she was not represented by me. She had her own agent and  just strange events that happened after closing. She ended up calling me to ask a question unrelated to this video. And we got to talking you know, I asked her, "oh how do you like living there? Blah, blah, blah". And that's when she shared with me, that will the manager of the building of the association, who also was her next-door neighbor. He introduced himself and then basically told her everything that she could and could not do. Which was in the rules that she was provided before she completed the transaction before she went to closing and bought it. And I don't know if she didn't read it or what the, maybe she didn't fully understand it. But regardless of that situation, I don't know exactly what happened there, but she found herself in a real situation because she had intended to get a roommate to offset some of her mortgage expense.

Sometimes associations are not properly managed, so they haven't done a very good job-saving money for upcoming maintenance issues. If you own a home or a condo or a townhouse, any structure at all that it does not last forever. Something is going to need to be repaired things age and they need to be replaced. A roof for example, is only going to last 20 to 30 years, depending on when it was put on what materials were used. And if there has been any weather damage since it was installed. So you want to make sure that your monthly HOA dues not only cover monthly expenses for your lawn care and your snow removal and any other general maintenance that needs to be done on a regular basis, but that you're also putting money away into a reserve savings for future maintenance events because you definitely do not want to be a homeowner who gets surprised with a special assessment because the association didn't save enough money for the roofs or the siding or sidewalk streets, any repairs that are in the common areas are going to come out of that reserve fund. We have a listing right now, that's in a development that is having some really major problems with the association. And I don't know if it's the association has been mismanaged by the board members or the management company hired to handle that. Or if it's the homeowners who have voted against paying extra on a monthly basis in their HOA dues, and when there's no money in your roofs all need to be replaced, who's going to pay for it. You are, you're the homeowner. You're either going to pay for it in your monthly HOA dues. And it's saved up over time. Or you're going to have to pay a big lump sum out of pocket. That is not going to be fun and special assessments can also come up for surprise things. There are three-story townhomes all around the Metro area.

So the garage is on the ground floor. The living room and kitchen is on the second floor. And then the third floor is the bedrooms. Well, these and I can sell them. I can't build them, but something, I don't know if they were built incorrectly or they found out after the fact that, oh, we should have done that differently. You know, that could happen. But on all of these three-story townhomes, the header on the garage had to be replaced because I think it was causing water damage. So when we sell one of these three-story townhomes we always ask, "is there been an assessment for the garage, the header in the garage?" And at this point now it's been, it's fairly common that the special assessment has already come and gone and paid for. So even when you sell your home and there's a special assessment already assessed you as the owner get to pay for it. So getting out of a special assessment by selling it to somebody else, isn't going to work because as the seller, the owner of the home when the property was assessed with a special assessment, that makes you the lucky winner. So when you are buying a property, we're going to make sure that you're protected against special assessments that were assessed to the previous owner, but keep in mind that an assessment can come up for any reason at any time. And hopefully, things have been budgeted well over time. So that reserve fund is built up to cover for maintenance events that are going to happen like a roof repair or siding repair so on and so forth.

We talked about this a little bit in the pros video, but one of the rules that many HOA have is in relation to rental properties, whether or not you as the owner of a condo or a townhome in a particular development can rent your property out. And depending on if you are an investor and you want rentals, that can be a good thing or if you're planning on living in your unit and you want to be surrounded by other owner-occupied units, you might want to limit the opportunity for rentals to take over your development. So if you're in a development that does allow rentals and doesn't have a cap on the rentals, having too many rentals in your HOA could affect your property value  overtime. Because people who want to live surrounded by the pride of ownership of other owner, occupied units are not probably going to purchase because they're, they're trying to stop renting. So they don't want to live by other renters. And those buyers who are getting an FHA loan, well, that's a government-backed loan and the government wants to make sure that it meets certain guidelines.

And so you cannot have more than I think, 10% in rentals. And you have to be FHA certified in order to get an FHA loan. So you also want to make sure that your association is up on their paperwork and following the guidelines that they have set in the rules as far as rentals go. So this video was kind of a Debbie downer on the cons of living in a condo or a townhouse, but I could see the bright side in almost any situation.

And honestly, the cons that we have shared may not be cons for everybody because you know, maybe you don't have pets and you are a minimalist. And so you don't need a lot of things to have extra storage for, and you love rules. So a condo or a townhouse might work out really well for you. And of course, if a condo or townhouse is not your jam, well we can always hook you up with a single-family home. No problem.

So no matter what you're interested in and If you have been thinking about buying a house (or a condo or a townhome), and you would like to talk more about it with me or someone on my team, we would love to talk more with you about it. Schedule a call to talk with one of us here: https://mywrighthouse.com/schedule-a-call