I’ve owned a condo before and was so frustrated with the board that I ran for the board and became president within 1 month of deciding to do so. Luckily I was able to get the other board members to see what needed to change and we got the association back on track, but it is a thankless job that I only took on to protect my property value.
This was a brand new condo complex and we only lived there 4 years, but by the time we left the number of renters in the place was approaching 50% which would have affected our ability to sell, so we sold quickly.
For this reason and the maintenance reasons discussed in this thread (especially with apt conversions), I would not even consider purchasing an older condo and certainly not an apt conversion!!! If you buy an older unit, you are just asking for a sky-high special assessment to cover some unforeseen major repair.
Think about it: some saavy investor owns an older apt complex and sees it is gonna cost him a bundle to repair in the next few years. What to do? Why, throw some lipstick on the pig and sell the units to unsuspecting, naive first time home owners as condos!! They’ll end up ponying up the repair costs. My intuition tells me that is the real reason for the rash of conversions.
Get a condo that is as new as possible, if condo life is the life for you. And be active on the board, or at a minimum attend the monthly meetings so your voice is heard. Believe it or not (contrary to what you read in the paper), they usually listen to reasonable people.
