Condo owners push back
Why buy a condo now when you might finally be able to afford a single family home here in Greater Boston?
I recently posed that question and got quite a response from condo buyers.
Some argued I am missing the intrinsic good things that come with condo ownership.
Well having just shoveled my driveway here out in Natick, this is one of those days when I wish I was a condo owner too.
If you want to own a house, that's great, but you had better either learn how to be handyman/handywoman or hire one.
Here's what CentDonation wrote:
I bought a townhouse condo even though I could have afforded a single family home. Why? Lawn care and snow plowing. If I had a single family home my yard would have been the one with waist high weeds, and my sidewalk would have been the impassable one. Also, I'm not a big hanging out outside person, so the lack of a private yard isn't as big a deal for me.
But there are even more practical considerations, especially here in Greater Boston, the global headquarters for inflated home prices.
First, if you want to live in a fashionable urban area and aren't running a hedge fund, buying a house is pretty much out of the question. In the Back Bay, South End, Beacon Hill and parts of Cambridge, condo ownership is the only realistic alternative for the 99 percent.
Where it becomes more of a judgment call is the suburbs, where home prices in some towns have fallen to the point buying a single-family has become more of an alternative for buyers trying to get their foot in the housing market.
On that note, I will leave off with another sage observation by someone who bought a condo and loves it.
Here's what JoninDot wrote:
In addition to the lack of stress over maintenance, there are other things you get with condos.
A condo can get you height that you can't get in a single-family house, which can give you great views and light.
In cold-weather cities, where the economics of heat mean that houses tend to have smaller overall footprints and go up for one or two stories, a single-family house that's suitable for a single person or a couple will often have very small rooms. A condo can be the only way to get 1200 square feet with large, open rooms (rather than smaller rooms spread over two floors).
Living in a condo can result in signicantly lower heating/cooling costs than a single-family home, depending on the design of the overall building.
And a condo can give you access to pedestrian-friendly, transit-accessible neighborhoods with easy access to restaurants and shops. Those neighborhoods don't have many single-family houses, and those that exist tend to be extremely expensive.
