• pqdinfo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Have you heard the term “Condominium”? Often shortened to “Condo”? Shared ownership, with an entity (usually organized as an HOA) shared by the owners who pay the shared bills.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium

    Very, very, common throughout the US, probably the most popular way of dealing with the issue of more complex land/ownership than “single building on plot all owned by one person”

    As the sibling post mentions, there are Housing Co-ops too, but, for example, if you wanted to get a low cost property in Florida, ideally with someone else doing the maintenance, but with you owning the property itself, you’ll almost certainly want to buy a Condo.

    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I suppose but HOAs are dicks. That’s a single controller. The above mentioned many people paying into the fund for taxes but what if one does not pay taxes? Do the rest suffer?

      • pqdinfo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I suppose but HOAs are dicks

        HOAs are the name given to a type of legal association, there’s nothing in the law that says they have to be made up of “Karens” (and male equivalents), or even have the powers that you generally see in the suburbs.

        Additionally, for an apartment block, they literally can’t have the powers you generally see in the suburbs that people complain about. How are you going to paint the outside of your 3rd floor apartment? What grass do you need to keep short? How is the deputy chief officer of the HOA going to sneak into your non-existent yard and fine you for planting the wrong sorts of flowers?

        Literally all an HOA can do in this instance is pay for (and organize the) maintenance of common areas and pay the taxes. So for these kinds of situations, it’s a positive entity.

        The above mentioned many people paying into the fund for taxes but what if one does not pay taxes? Do the rest suffer?

        The HOA pays the taxes, you pay the HOA. If you don’t pay the HOA, then the HOA can get a lein on your property and ultimately force you to sell it, like a local government would if it was a single family home and you refused to pay your taxes. Which given it is, ultimately, levied for the same reason as local government taxes, seems appropriate. Do others suffer in the mean time? In theory, they could, in the sense that they’d have to pay increased HOA fees, but ultimately there’s no incentive to not pay the HOA, any more than there is to not pay taxes.