Pros and Cons of.....

[fruitbowlk]

Owning a Townhouse VS. Single Family Home?

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Pros
-Cheaper
-usually smaller
-less maintenance
-no yardwork usually

Cons
-dealing with neighbors in association
-association monthly fee
-sharing walls/noise
-no yard

I couldn't afford a SFH where I live, so townhouse is what I got. I plan on buying a SFH as the next step. I think it's doable with our financial plan, but a lot depends on my DH's business.

We might have to stick to a townhouse to afford a business. Mostly it was financially that put us in a townhouse.

[sweeps]

Townhouse: Cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain/heat/cool/furnish.

House: Bigger, no neighbor noise, no homeowner's association (and no HOA fees), bigger yard, more privacy.

Note: These are broad generalizations. There will be exceptions.

[Bimmer]

Kids or no kids in your life? If you have kids, how many? If no kids, plan to have any?

To add to the other pro/con thoughts, the parking situation is usually better at a SFH.

[snafu]

After 20 yrs in suburban SFH, sold and bought T/house approx same size. No more shovelling snow @ 6 a.m., no more summer yard work [never buy a hse on a corner lot], no more nagging about tasks, no more external repairs/maintenance, painting, new fencing, new driveway/concrete, roof issues, no equipment like shovels, rakes, lawnmower, whipper, blower etc.,

Townhouse chosen primarily for location and access to services I use regularly. X-llent self managed condo board, service people live on site, modest fees, quiet, friendly, helpful, neighbors, beautiful landscaping by professionals. We have had more snow than typical this year and it has been cleared & removed from complex by 7a.m.

[fruitbowlk]

Originally Posted by Bimmer

Kids or no kids in your life? If you have kids, how many? If no kids, plan to have any?


To add to the other pro/con thoughts, the parking situation is usually better at a SFH.

I have one child which is a toddler. I think it will stay this way. if not no more than 2.

[Angio333]

The biggest con is that most townhouse communities that I have seen have associations that tell you what to do with your property.

[MonkeyMama]

I have to agree with LAL.

I think realistically condos/townhomes are generally not as good investments for the long run.

We owned a condo but it was in an extremely high cost of living area. The entire time we owned, condos appreciated faster than single family homes, because no one could afford single family homes!!!! That was rare. But if you are in a high cost area it can be a pretty good investment. In other areas (most) it generally isn't as good as an investment as a home. (Thinking long-term of course). It can be harder to justify buying over renting, I think. Unless you simply want stability.

Oh yes - and you can always get hit for a special assessment in a condo or townhouse. Say they need to replace the roof and they don't have the funds? They can request a large sum from all of the owners. Though, agreed, in the long run, condos/townhouses will have far less maintenance, even considering special assessments.

Insurance and property taxes would generally be cheaper though. I found that the HOA fees were a wash with what you would spend maintaining a single family home.

We LOVED our condo. We moved and bought a house in a lower cost area. The condo was nice when we were childless and both worked. There wasn't much to maintain and it was a very peaceful unit. We wanted a house for our kids, but look forward to moving back to a condo in retirement. In retirement I know we would appreciate having less to maintain. If we couldn't have moved though, we would have been fine just raising our kids there. Truth is they spend more time at the park than in our yard anyway.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by Angio333

The biggest con is that most townhouse communities that I have seen have associations that tell you what to do with your property.

Lots of single home developments have similar HOAs that do the very same thing, so you can't really generalize about that. We purposely bought a home in an older development that did not have an HOA so there were no rules and nobody telling us what we could and couldn't do.

We initially looked at townhomes when we were shopping because we thought that was all we could afford. After we saw a bunch of them, we ran the numbers again and realized that once we accounted for the association fee, we could actually afford a single home instead, so that's what we got.

Another con of townhomes - association fees can and do increase regularly. Also, when big jobs need to be done, they can issue special assessments to all owners above and beyond the regular fee. For example, if the parking lot needs to be repaved or the playground needs new equipment, you will get a bill for your "share" of the job.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Yep, thus you should investigate before buying a townhouse how the association is run. We run our current association. DH and I are the bosses of the three condos. Because we moved first.

But in HCOLA most people live in condos/townhouses because homes are too expensive.

And it's totally possible to raise kids in them. Or else there should be no kids in manhattan and the rest of the world.

You don't need a yard or large space to raise kids, it's a choice. Not a bad choice, but still a choice. I like the idea, but if you don't mind a condo or townhouse, then no biggie.

You can fit 1 or 2 kids in a 2 bedroom townhouse/condo.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by LivingAlmostLarge

And it's totally possible to raise kids in them. Or else there should be no kids in manhattan and the rest of the world.

You don't need a yard or large space to raise kids, it's a choice. Not a bad choice, but still a choice. I like the idea, but if you don't m

Absolutely. I was born and raised in Philadelphia in a rowhome. That is essentially the same thing as a townhouse except without the HOA. When you own a rowhome, you are still responsbile for all the outside maintenance and there is no fee to be paid to anyone. That's probably 80% of the housing in the city of Philadelphia.

We had what everyone calls a postage stamp lawn in front of the house. It was big enough for a blow up pool in the summer or to build a snowman in the winter and that was about it. If you wanted to have a catch, one person had to stand on the neighbor's lawn 3 or 4 houses away. These were all 3 bedroom homes and most families had 2 or 3 children in them. Yes, children often shared a bedroom. Imagine that. Oh, and there was only 1 bathroom for the 5 of them.

Nothing at all wrong with raising a family like that.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

In my city, the newer town houses are built with garages beneath them, so parking is guaranteed for one or two cars per unit. But I notice that often they have not sloped the driveway downward to make a traditional basement level garage. The garage occupies the half the ground floor, with unfinished basement occupying the other half. Thus the first living floor is a full story above ground. In some luxury town houses, I suppose there may be an elevator, but I have never seen it. The owner must carry every bag of groceries up a full flight of stairs just to get into the house. Ugh.

I would rather park on the street, have a below ground full basement, and not have to climb so many stairs to the front door.

On the other hand, I have seen some newer single family homes built with this same configuration. Just not so often as in town houses.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by Joan.of.the.Arch

The owner must carry every bag of groceries up a full flight of stairs just to get into the house. Ugh.

I would rather park on the street, have a below ground full basement, and not have to climb so many stairs to the front door.

The homes in Philly, where I grew up, had a full basement that was below street level. The garage was on that same level. So if you parked in your garage or in front of it, you were entering the house in the basement and had to walk up a flight to the kitchen. If you entered from the front of the house, there were 7-8 steps from street level. So either way you had to walk stairs to get in.

[Bimmer]

Of course you can raise kids in a TH/condo. If you have a choice, though..

I have lived in duplexes, apartments, SFH's. Even if I have to do some work to keep it up, the SFH is by far the best experience (IMO).

[LivingAlmostLarge]

No, but the OP shouldn't feel pressure to buy a SFH just because he or she has kids. It's a personal choice and either situation works well.

I know MANY people who say "I need a house before i have kids." If that were true no one in cities would afford kids.

[TBH]

I live in one of those Philadelphia row homes Steve is describing. Ours is 3BR, 1BA. We have a driveway but no garage. Our yard is definitely postage stamp size, but there are 3 parks within half a mile of us.

Downsides I see to sharing walls with neighbors on either side: My one neighbor has a very shrill voice and I can hear every word when she talks on the phone in the bedroom. My other neighbor shares a kitchen wall with us. We hardly ever hear her, but I can smell what she's cooking. Also, it's pretty hard to get rid of pests unless the other houses are working on it, too. Luckily my immediate neighbors are very clean people, so that helps. We also share a front porch with the neighbor on one side, and a back porch with the neighbor on the other side. We get a lot of ice on the front porch because the neighbor (a pensioner) has a bad downspout which creates a puddle on the porch, which then freezes. Also, if they don't keep their roofs up, we could get water damage in our house because the roofs are connected. So far it's been okay, but we've had some tense negotiations about who was going to pay for porch repair, etc. Sometimes I wish we had a HOA who would negotiate those things for me, so I wouldn't have to go knock on someone's door and say, "my roofer says your roof is shot and there's no point in my fixing my roof unless you do yours too."

On the other hand, our house is very cheap to heat because we're only heating two sides. Our living room is a bit cave-like, though, because there are only windows on the front and back sides of the house.

Another good thing: security. Because we share porches with elderly people who don't travel much, they are really watching out for our house when we're away. When we come home after a trip, our neighbor who shares our front porch always comes to her door and looks out when she hears us coming in, just to make sure it's us.

We do have a child, and I will say that it has been nice not having to work as much because our house is affordable. Low payments, low utility bills. We're looking to move and will probably try to get a twin this time, which in Philadelphia terms is a house connected to another house on only one side. More windows, and more outside space.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by TBH

Downsides I see to sharing walls with neighbors on either side: My one neighbor has a very shrill voice and I can hear every word when she talks on the phone in the bedroom. My other neighbor shares a kitchen wall with us. We hardly ever hear her, but I can smell what she's cooking.

Our living room is a bit cave-like, though, because there are only windows on the front and back sides of the house.

A couple of other shared-wall problems:
Our one neighbor kept the phones all turned up to maximum loudness and tended to get a lot of late night calls. As a result, we were often woken up during the night by their phone ringing.

The same neighbor also smoked. That made it impossible for us to open our windows in nice weather. Even with the windows closed, we could often smell smoke in our house. With the windows open, it was intolerable.

You know, I never thought twice about the window situation because that's how I was raised. There is a downside to lots of windows, though. We thought it was great when we bought our house... until we tried to figure out where to put all the furniture and hang pictures. We found that we were very limited as to where to put things like the sofa or wall unit or bookcases because there aren't a lot of big stretches of wall without a window on them.