Urban renewal is becoming more and more popular. Most of the people moving back in to the urban areas are baby boomers and executives with some free time on their hands. For this reason most of them are choosing to live in a condo. The trend of turning former apartments or an old factory in to condos has helped to turn around some of the urban areas. You can find great homes for reasonable pricing or a top notch location for a higher end price.

Before you buy a condo you should do some research into the condo rules and regulations? Each community will have their own fees and rules. You should familiarize yourself with each of these to understand what rights and responsibilities you as the condo owner will have.

Find out who is enforcing the Condo rules and regulations? Is it a homeowner association? A management company?

Most of the time condo owners are responsible for everything on the interior and the association is taking care of everything on the outside of the building. In some cases you may have an assigned parking space in an underground parking garage. When the condo is on a lake you may have a boat dock you can lease.

Some of the condominium associations might charge you an additional fee that helps them to offset any exterior repairs they might encounter and that fee is most of the time part of the condominium fee you have to pay, in addition to your mortgage and insurance payment.

Some other things to consider is that when your condo is on the 38^th floor, are you willing to run down 38 flight of stairs in emergency? You may also have other restrictions due to the building or condo associations rulings.

The nice part with a condo is that you are only responsible for the interior of your condo and the condo association is responsible for the exterior of the condo. You don’t have to worry about cutting the grass, fixing a roof leak or making any other exterior repair. The downfall is that the exterior maintenance upkeep is only as good as the condo community management company.

Either way, like with everything, there are positive and negative things you need to consider when choosing a condo to purchase. When you have any additional questions about condos feel free to contact the Settles Team.