A condominium as a first home, after the 2022 reforms

The case for it

Lower entry price, lower maintenance burden, and access to locations a house at the same money cannot reach.

In our own area figures, the median condominium value sits well below the single-family value in the same area — often by half. For a first purchase, that difference is the difference between buying now and buying in four years.

What changed in 2022, and why it matters to you

Florida now requires milestone inspections on older buildings and properly funded structural reserves. Associations can no longer vote to underfund the roof.

This is good law and it has a short-term cost: buildings that deferred maintenance for twenty years are now funding it, and that arrives as an assessment. The result is a market where two units in the same neighbourhood, at the same price per square foot, can be very different purchases.

The five questions to ask about the building

1. What are the reserves, and are they fully funded for the studied items?
2. Is there a special assessment pending or recently completed? A recent one can be good news — it means the work is done and paid for.
3. What is the association’s insurance, and what is the deductible? On a hurricane claim the deductible is passed to owners.
4. What is the minimum lease term? This decides whether you can ever rent it, and it affects resale.
5. What percentage of units are owner-occupied? Lenders care, and below certain thresholds financing gets harder — which shrinks your buyer pool when you sell.

The financing detail nobody mentions

Some buildings are not financeable, and it is not about you.

Lenders review the association as well as the borrower: reserves, litigation, owner-occupancy ratio, insurance and the share of units held by one owner. A building that fails those checks can be cash-only in practice, which affects both what you can buy and what you can later sell to. If you are using an FHA or VA loan, the building must be on the relevant approved list — and many South Florida buildings are not.

What to compare it against

Not the mortgage, the whole monthly number.

A condominium’s association fee replaces some costs you would otherwise carry — exterior insurance, roof, grounds — and adds others. The honest comparison against a house is total monthly cost, including the assessment risk. Our payment calculator takes the association fee as an input for exactly that reason.