There is real estate and there is real estate.

Contrary to popular belief, real estate is not always a good investment.

It can indeed be financially ruinous.

 

Case in point -- Florida Condos.

 

Before moving to Thailand, I took a serious condo shopping trip to Ft. Lauderdale.

 

This was decades back and even then I found the pricing on them kind of insane. But that was the tip of the iceberg compared to now.

 

Sales price reasonable, but HOA fees outrageously high and imbalanced relative to sales price. In some cases even back then really weird, like a giveaway price of 60K but 800 a month HOA.  At the time this was before the Florida condo insurance crisis caused by the big building collapse. So add HOA fee insanity to the insurance crisis plus ruinous special assessments and you're talking just walking away from the so called home you thought you owned.

 

So overall something seemed wrong and it just didn't feel right. Especially for high rises condos there.

 

There was one gated community rather far inland that was all single story attached units where the pricing to HOA fees were sane. I think I recall 175K sale and 300 HOA fairly normal.  I came close to buying that. Not sure if that particular places would have turned out OK or not as not really any issue of building collapse there.

 

 

Toronto is a disaster now too. 

There was a time when some Florida areas were considered safe from weather but it seems those days are gone. I would imagine many homeowners there are perhaps dropping Insurance because of price hike.

 

Quite a few utube videos documenting the collapse of RE in Florida.

20 minutes ago, EVENKEEL said:

There was a time when some Florida areas were considered safe from weather but it seems those days are gone. I would imagine many homeowners there are perhaps dropping Insurance because of price hike.

 

Quite a few utube videos documenting the collapse of RE in Florida.

Florida condos have always been caveat emptor. I would never want to live there, nor anywhere on the Coast of the USA. I dont like storms.

Once upon a time, I was sort of considering moving to Florida.  One of my friends seemed to think Miami Beach would be fun.  South Beach. This was years ago, but even back then, there were warning signs. Obtaining insurance was difficult, especially in some areas, and the condo fees weren't exactly cheap.   

 

I guess I dodged a bullet.  

Insurance is such a minefield, and of course it's very State dependant.

 

I live in a townhouse HOA and we had a collective policy.

 

Then it got to the point insurance was just ridiculously expensive, and for HOA's the insurance phrase is 'walls out' and you're on the hook for everything inside the walls

 

Previously it was the rule multi family dwellings couldn't self insure so we thought we were stuck.

 

Then things all loosened up and we got individual coverage for wall in and out , which coupled with our cars dropped the monthly cost by close to 50%

 

My rentals are in a multi level structure, still working on that