Condo Media - October 2011 - 60

Insight

Board Member

by Geri Matraia

Adult Communities
he concept of adult communities was a great idea. Many “baby boomers” reached retirement age and realized they no longer wanted to spend their time mowing the lawn and painting the house. It was time for them to enjoy the fruits of their labor by traveling, playing golf and, in general, doing many of the things that you cannot do when you are working and maintaining a single-family home. There are other reasons people make the choice to go from private ownership of a house with responsibility for everything that happens on the property to paying a monthly fee for common ownership and only being responsible for the inside space. For some, it is

Common Interest Ownership vs. Single-Family Homeownership Tradeoffs

downsizing. For others, it is moving to a single floor configuration, which seems to be the preferred layout for many adults as they think about the future and what their needs might be. In an adult community, most of the residents move there from their own single-family homes, and they likely have no idea what common interest ownership is all about. However, it is important to think about the trade-offs of living in an adult community and this is where a course in condominium living would be helpful.

Rule and Regulation Considerations
Regardless of the reason for choosing an adult community, the most important

thing for a prospective owner to understand is that living in a condominium is not like living in your own singlefamily home where you made all of the decisions about your property. While condominium owners enjoy the fact that they have less responsibility caring for a house and all the land around it, they miss some of the “joys” of owning a home like having a certain bush, flowers, birdfeeders, door decorations, etc. Some people think that doing “little things” around their unit should be permitted. However, each owner’s “little things” in areas that they want to personalize are part of the “common area,” which means they belong to every owner and not all agree on what should be done in the common areas. The responsibility of the association is to maintain the property to preserve and hopefully enhance the property value so the value is as high as it can be. Curb appeal contributes to that as well as regular maintenance schedules. Many communities allow for unit owners special requests, however, it has to benefit and conform to any master plan for the community. If the request is, for example, to plant a Japanese maple tree in an area where it could be easily damaged by snow removal activities, the community really needs to think before allowing it. If the tree gets damaged there is now an unhappy resident who thinks it is the association’s responsibility to replace it. Also what happens when that unit is sold? New owners often assume that the plant material there when they

CONDO MEDIA • OCTOBER 2011

Condo Media - October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Condo Media - October 2011