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July 19, 2008
How Does One Determine if Condo Living is for Them?
You are not even in yet, just at the house shopping stage. Would you be a likely candidate for happiness in a condo?
Ask yourselves:
Have you ever experienced apt living? Was it tolerable?
If not, then beware of condo living - it has many of the similar issues that occur when neighbors are living in close quarters, and it is harder to get out of if it becomes intolerable.
Are you someone who considers yourself to be "King of the Castle", without regard for others who live nearby?
"King of the Castle" is fine ... great in fact, if you are "King" of a Castle. In a condo, it can work against you. If you believe you can do anything that you want, and/or claim any areas that you want for your own exclusive use, and believe that the rules are for everyone else, you may end up fighting with everyone around you.
Do you often act out or retaliate when someone does something that makes you mad?
If you respond to difficult situations with anger or retaliation instead of with a calm "take a step back before reacting" and find out what is really happening attitude, you may find that you are unhappy a great deal of the time, perhaps even more so in a close, dense living situation like a condominium.
If you hate hearing people "living" overhead, don't buy a condo that is underneath another one.
If you have 3 cars, and only two parking spaces are offered for use in the development, don't buy the condo.
If you want to convert the garage, and the CC&Rs say that garages are for parking, even if you see that others use their garage for storage, don't assume that it should be "no problem" to ignore the restriction.
On a positive note, are you a really busy person who does not want to be bothered by "house stuff"?
If you appreciate a home where someone else arranges all the maintenance and you just pay a fee, someone else arranges to get the pool cleaned and you just pay a fee, you might be happier in a condo. If you love to travel and want to be able to "lock and go", and live in a place where the neighbors are close and it is not easily obvious that the home is empty because of people coming and going everyday, condo living may be be just the right thing.
If you like amenities like swimming pools and spas, and cannot afford a home with these benefits, you will probably appreciate a condo, but remember, you have to share, and you have to follow the rules.
Condo living is sold as an affordable product and in many cases condos do cost less than single family homes of the same square footage. However, remember that to qualify to buy a condominium, you have to add in the assessment to the costs that will be factored in the ability to qualify for a loan, so you may qualify for less. And remember, other people make the financial decisions for you, when you own a condominium.
And, last, but not least, if you are considering looking at condominiums, be sure to read my book THE CONDO ANSWER BOOK, available through Sourcebook Publishing Company, a Division of Sphinx Publishing, through their website, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.com.
Even if you are already in a condo or shared amenity living situation, the book offers a lot of basic good sense information about how to solve problems and what to do when something gets your goat.
And one more thing. It is important to understand what I call "The Montana Concept". It goes like this. If you live on a ranch in Montana, you probably have very few restrictions placed on use of the property. When you move into a "county regulated" unincorporated area or town, you will probably find zoning, building, and other ordinances that regulate the property. Move into a City, and you will find additional ordinances called municipal ordinances. And last, but not least, when you move into a condominium development or shared amenity development, you will find another layer of restrictions usually in the form of a "Declaration", commonly called CC&Rs in California.
Is this surprising? It should not be. The closer you shove people together and the more you tie their interests together, the more regulations you need (and the more "enforcement" you need too). That is because not everyone lives by an unwritten "Code of Reasonable Conduct" or the Golden Rule.
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Posted by Beth Grimm at July 19, 2008 11:54 AM