Maintenance Fees and the Current Market

By Guest Contributor Yuri Flores, Sales Associate, Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, Aventura office.

In our previous market (which a very good friend referred to as "real estate on steroids"), buying a condo meant buying into a low-maintenance way of living. Condos can still be an affordable and stress free way to live, as each month the owner pays maintenance fees to the condo/homeowners’ association to cover common expenses in the building such as security guards and pool and grounds maintenance. In a condo building, maintenance fees are usually based on the square footage of a unit, therefore the larger the unit, the more the owner is contributing to common expenses. The fees are usually increased on a yearly basis as features of the building begin to wear out and need replacing.

There isn’t one day that goes by where I don’t have a client asking me to find them a "STEAL" or the "BEST DEAL." While we may find a condo or a home that was $300k and is now $100k, the maintenance fees remain the same. Maintenance fees do not go down with the market; if anything they tend to increase. These days, a condo building or a single-family home community may have numerous foreclosures, which means that many owners have stopped paying their fees. The owners who are still living there can be responsible for covering the difference, so their monthly fees might go up dramatically.

As you can see, you may be finding a $100K home but you may end up paying more in monthly maintenance fees than you will on your mortgage. This is why it is our job as Realtors to better educate our clients when calling us to ask for that “STEAL or BEST DEAL” so they aren’t surprised when the fees increase.