In today's real estate market, you might find that single family houses that are not attached to each other are just a little bit more expensive than you can afford, or maybe you want to pay. A great alternative to single family housing would be a condo or a townhouse. We're going to stay a hundred percent positive and talk about all the pros involved in living in a condo or townhouse. 

One of my favorite pros about living in a condo or a townhouse is they generally have a Home Owners Association (HOA). The HOA takes care of your lawn and your snow removal. So no more mowing or edging your yard - they will take care of all of that for you. They'll also clean the leaves out of your gutters. Of course, you do pay for those services as it's built into the monthly HOA fee.

A great benefit of living in a condo or a townhouse situation is taking advantage of their outdoor amenities, like a swimming pool, maybe even a hot tub. Sometimes they have clubhouses where you can reserve time on Sunday afternoon to host a shower for a friend, or have a party on a Friday night and use the clubhouse or have a family reunion or your holiday family party. If you want to host Christmas, but your condo is not big enough, then you can reserve the clubhouse and host your family there.

 

Another pro of living in a condo or a townhouse would be your insurance is going to cost less than it would in a single family house. So in a condo or a townhouse situation, you only have to insure the inside of your property. Whereas the HOA takes care of the exterior. Your insurance costs out of pocket are going to be less because you're just insuring a portion of the home instead of the whole thing, because the HOA bears some of the risks on that.

Another pro about living in a condo or a townhouse is that it might have better security than living in a single family home. If you're living in a condo like an apartment style condo, that's where it might have one main door to the building, and then you have a key fob or some sort of access to get into the door. And then you take maybe an elevator or stairs to your particular unit within the building. Well, that's a little bit more secure because you have to have a different type of key to get in the front door. It's not just open to anybody who wants to come in. There's also perhaps more lighting and more people with prying eyes with curious eyes. That kind of sounds like a con and we're keeping this positive about living in condos or townhomes. The fact is is that there are more people living closer together in those situations. 

 

Sometimes you get more for your money in a condo or a townhome situation, especially those townhomes that are maybe two stories with a finished basement and a walkout backing up to woods. That's a pretty sweet deal! Depending on your situation and what you want, you might find that you get more for your money because sometimes the cost is lower on a condo or a townhome. Sometimes it's not, that's not really a general rule of thumb, but it could be a pro depending on what you're looking for.

Every HOA is going to have rules. Some have more rules than others, but I think that the rules can definitely be in the pro column for living in a condo or a townhome because the rules are there to make sure that everybody follows them and that your living experience is exactly what you would expect. For example: 

When you live in a community with an association, maintenance should be taken care of regularly and proactively. So whether that is cleaning the gutters in the fall or the spring, monitoring the roofs to make sure that there's no damage or that they're replaced at an appropriate time, taking care of the grounds so that the grass doesn't get too tall or too weedy, etc. It's definitely a PRO to have a team of people, the association, and all of their contractors, taking care of all of those maintenance items.

You see there's lots of great reasons to choose a condo or a townhouse for your next home. And in our next video, we'll talk about the cons because this video was 100% positive.

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