Condo vs house

which do you prefer. can some people name the pros and cons for both

tia

Re: Condo vs house

I personnally hate community living. I feel like you have no privacy and can hear the people on all sides of you. However, the pros about a condo is that maintenance is included and you never have to mow your lawn.

Re: Condo vs house

I found the price difference to be very little between condo vs. house.

A house is really independent from a community. Don't most condos on LI have at least a common wall with a neighboor? From my experience it's not enough privacy.

Pros for condo
Less upkeep with the yard.
Grounds are always maintained nicely
Unity of all units

Pros for houses
More privacy
More yard
More individuality

Re: Condo vs house

Posted by MrsFlatbread

I personnally hate community living. I feel like you have no privacy and can hear the people on all sides of you. However, the pros about a condo is that maintenance is included and you never have to mow your lawn.

Re: Condo vs house

I have lived in both

pros for condo(mine were townhouse style)
gutters cleaned
house powerwashed
snow removal
awesome lawn & tree care
great pool & clubhouse always ready to use
nice neighbors
I had a garage & driveway in my last townhouse & extra parking for guests.
The only noise issues I had was my one neighbor would run up & down her stairs sometimes & I could slightly hear the vibration-other than that nothing.
When I lived in the apatment style condo I never heard the neighbor below me.
One community I lived in had a security gate & I felt very safe there.

cons-
my yard wasn't big enough or private enough to have big parties
there are rules about what you can plant
you can't change the exterior of the condo
my DH has commercial vehicles & you can't park them in the community overnight
There were a few other silly rules I can't remember
the homeowners association has elected officials that have figure out how to manage the money in order to keep the community in good shape, sometimes they do a good job & sometimes they don't.

I lived in condos from 1995 to 2004 mostly while I was a single mother & I loved every minute of it. I think its a great lifestyle for people that aren't into spending their free time taking care of home stuff.

ETA-IMO *if* the market does go down over the next few years, condo owners will have a hard time making money when its time to sell because the gap between condos & single families is already so small...when the market is soft more people will opt to get "more" by buying a house & condos will sit unsold like they did in the 90's.
All of my landlords in my condo rentals were people that bought them as starters, had families & needed a house but couldn't sell the condo for more than what they paid.
Of course that changed in 2004-2005, but they had to wait it out as unlikely landlords.

Message edited 3/16/2007 6:49:17 AM.

Re: Condo vs house

Posted by MrsPowers

Posted by MrsFlatbread



Can you tell we both are living in community living situations??

Right next door to eachother!!!

Re: Condo vs house

Re: Condo vs house

We chose house over condo. The two were comparitively priced and in the complex we were looking, the common charges have risen exponentially over the past few years.

Based on what the condos are going for, we paid $5k more for a 4br 2ba cape than we would've paid for a 2br 1.5ba condo. Yes, the house needs some work but, it's a place we can see ourselves staying in for awhile.

Re: Condo vs house

DH and I looked at condos for a while in Suffolk. we even put a bid on one in Holtsville, but then backed out.

condos don't cost a whole lot less than houses. and with the monthly maint. fees, your monthly payments could actually end up being the same as on a house, depending on the house of course. and, you cannot write off the main. fees on your taxes.

pros to condos:
- usually newer than houses on LI
- you don't have to worry about yard work
- you don't have to worry about repairing anything to do with the structure or exterior
- garbage dumpsters - after living in an apt complex with them for 6.5 yrs, this is a MAJOR plus IMO
- can cost less

cons to condos:
- less privacy, although not always!
- community living, although some folks like that
- you can't build an extension
- maintenance fees! and they always go up, just like taxes
- no garage - none of the complexes we saw had a garage or a driveway. IMO, that sucks! there are some that do, but they are MAJOR $$$!
- last to increase in value, first to lose value. this is a factual statistic, no my opinion.

Re: Condo vs house

We have both (renting out condo) and the condo was more affordable for me as single person BUT I wish I had got a small house because condos fees are ridiculous, and that was more money I could have spent toward a mortgage. So I say house over condo anyday.

Re: Condo vs house

We thought about going the condo route, but in the end decided against it because of several factors

1)sharing at least one wall with a neighbor
2) having to get permission to do some things
3) (and most important) that with the maintenance fees, we weren't really saving any money.

Re: Condo vs house

we have lived in both and prefer our house to the condo we lived in.
(This is in CT)

House in bigger than our condo was
Maintenance was included in condo-obv. not with a house

We had a great pool that no one seemed to ever use at the condo

Privacy at our house

I can go on and on about how wonderful it is owning our house- we enjoy it so much more, but all the responsibilities are on us-things go wrong, we fix it...We love that though...
-------------
TOO many rules in our condo complex...
when you can use your dyer
how to park your car, etc... the list goes on...

It was very Clean and had all landscaping taken care of for you...snow removal as well...

it was gated-which was nice-except that we had 3 different incidences where people drove THROUGH the gate... and another woman drove THROUGH the mailboxes ....We had to go to the President's condo for our maiil for two weeks!


a lot of eldery people lived in our complex- so we did not make a lot of friend connections there

neighbors were always asking DH to fix things for them, which was cute in the beginning, but helloooo we have a maintenance dept that fixes everything for you! call them, don't wake us up in the middle of the night because your lightbulb needs to be changed!
l
uckily our neighbors were old and barely made noise- but I would imagine they hear us- that's no good either-We had company over often

NO dogs allowed in our complex
we couldn't get our Boogie until we bought our house

Message edited 3/16/2007 10:29:29 AM.

Re: Condo vs house

Message edited 3/16/2007 10:56:53 AM.

Re: Condo vs house

Posted by MrsFlatbread

Posted by MrsPowers

Posted by MrsFlatbread



Can you tell we both are living in community living situations??

Right next door to eachother!!!

That's right neighbor!!!

Re: Condo vs house

we choose a condo because of cost. It was significantly cheaper per month even with the maintance plus there was less stuff to do in it as with a house we would have had to replace bigger more expensive things. So far we are happy and its seems to be an extremely laid back development.

Re: Condo vs house