The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
nytimes.com
The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
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Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#2No. Common walls and shared floor/ceiling sucks, thank you very much. Better to be in a trailer (which I quite like)
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#3What is the point of these opinion pieces? Why should we care about what someone at New York Times says over any other person? These kind of articles must be made simply to drive traffic and stimulate rage. It will be interpreted as just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them and a condo HOA breathing down their backs. I guess it worked.
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#4I'm remembering how weird of a place (Boston) I'm living in.
> This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet).
Even properties that Red Sox players are living in west of the city are rarely over 6,000sq/ft. When I see a listing for a home over 3,000sq/ft here it's a rarity.
~1200-2400 sq/ft homes are pretty average in the Boston/Cambridge area. Many condos are more in the 800-1600 sq/ft range, and it's also not uncommon to find 1200sq/ft houses.
I guess that being said, almost everything here is 100 years old. I'm personally against a condo for myself because I'm just too damn loud (drums and guitar), and I'm sure to piss off most neighbors with that. If it wasn't for that hobby, I'd be totally happy with a condo.
I just checked, and there is one property for sale in Boston-proper (which includes JP and Dorchester) over 9,000 sq/ft for sale right now, and it's a 15k sq/ft estate for nearly 4mm.
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#5a major point people dont consider is the HOA. Speaking from experience of a friend who was a plumber for one of these condo complexes:
In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm they hire, the construction company can take out a lien on the property until their bill is paid.
That lien means you cannot sell your condo until the HOA pays their debt. In my friends case, the HOA had blown all their CAM money on lavish vacations and dinners for key members of the HOA board. They had no money to pay for a sewage repair job, and left 54 members of the housing compex stuck with a $20,000USD repair bill. After a grisly court battle the HOA was disbanded, CAM fees were agreed to be paid directly to the plumbing company for the year, and the complex went into foreclosure after the debt had been paid as most tenants had sold.
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#6I'm remembering how weird of a place (Boston) I'm living in. > This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet). Even properties that Red Sox players are living in west of the city are rarely over 6,000sq/ft. When I see a listing for a home over 3,000sq/ft here it's a rarity. ~1200-2400 sq/ft homes are pretty average in the Boston/C…
In my experience houses greater than 6k sq ft are useful for one of a couple scenarios: either you have >5 residents (parents, grandparents, kids, live-in help) and need lots of bedrooms/extra space, or you're throwing frequent social events and need your home to function as an event venue.
I briefly lived in an 8.5k sq ft house with two other people and on many mornings I felt like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. Never again.
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#7>Every year, the National Association of Home Builders presents its vision for the New American Home,
> This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet
Wait a minute, you mean the trade association for residential homebuilders thinks we should build absurdly large, expensive houses? Well, I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#8After owning a few different place, single family home and two condos, I've decided that I will never own a condo again, only a SFH. Too much crap to put up with.
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#9a major point people dont consider is the HOA. Speaking from experience of a friend who was a plumber for one of these condo complexes: In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm they hire, the construction company can take out a lie…
54 people couldn't cough up $20k?
Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo
#10a major point people dont consider is the HOA. Speaking from experience of a friend who was a plumber for one of these condo complexes: In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm they hire, the construction company can take out a lie…
The laws regarding exactly what plays out when an HOA(condo board) doesn't pay its bills likely changes drastically by jurisdiction, but higher level you are highlighting an important point - "The Tragedy of the Commons" is a very significant issue with condos, only takes a few bad actors to make things really bad for everyone.