For your convenience, here is a transcript of the video:

Hi I’m Jeff Kropp, I run a company called the Homebuyer Agents.

A lot of clients don’t understand the difference between a condominium and a single family home. Well let’s just look at the differences really quick. In a home, you own the structure and the piece of land that the structrues is built on. What that means is that you the home owner are responsible for repairs if the roof starts leaking…you know your your whole house would flood until you go out and get a roofer to replace the roof. No one is going to do the repairs for you or pay for the repairs. You have to maintain your own yard, your landscaping, and mow the lawn. If your basement has some flooding, guess what, you’re the owner of that property, that structure, and that land. You have to deal with it.

So, the only restrictions…Let’s just say you want to knock down the house and build a new one or maybe you want to put an addition on the home, you have to be aware of covenants of you live in a subdivision for example. So your right to use the property and build whatever you want on your land is not unlimited. Some covenants in a subdivision might prevent for example fences from being put up on your lot line. The municipality or city you live in is going to have restrictions on how big of a structure you can build on a particular sized piece of land. So there are going to be city codes and things like that that your builder will have to work with. Beyond that, you basically own it, you have very little restriction on what you can do with it versus a condo.

What is a condo? Very simply put, when you buy a condo, you are buying the air in between the walls. Now that may sound a little bit funny, but let’s just break it down a little bit. Basically from the drywall in is what you own. Starting with the paint, then the flooring, cabinets, counters, appliances, window treatments, the lighting, the ceiling fans, mirrors, and anything that is attached is also what you own. So it’s not just the air between the walls, but that is a good wat to think about it. So what does that mean? The association that you pay your assessments into maintains the common elements. That’s the drywall, the plumbing and electric inside the walls, the roof of the building, the elevators. Elevators can be expensive to maintain. Storage areas, and landscaping…things like that.

You may have amenities in a condo. You may have a security person or doorman. You may have a pool or gym or something like that. Of course you are going to have limits that you don’t have in a single family home on what you can do with the space. Usually you can only make cosmetic changes. You can’t really knock down all the walls in your condo. Occasionally you may be able to move a wall around to open up the space in the living room, but that’s about the most you can ever do.

You’re going to have to check with the rules and regulations to see you whose impact your day to day living. They might restrict pets, types of pets, size of pets, or number of pets you may have. If you have four cats that might be a problem. What types of grills can you use, where can you use the grills. Noise limitations, and limitations on satellite dishes. Can you rent your unit out if you decide to move some day, that’s a big one, rental restrictions.

Sometimes there’s politics. Depending on how big the association is, you probably want to attend the meetings, ask a lot of questions and figure out what’s going on. At the same time, you don’t have a lot of work to do physically in the property, but you may have to actually put some time in intelectualy in terms of going to meetings, and looking at minutes and asking questions. It’s not as pain free as sometimes people think.

So that’s a little bit about the differences between single family homes and condos. I’m Jeff Kropp. Thank you!