What to look for when buying a Boston condo

The document set, and what each one tells you

Master deed, declaration of trust and bylaws, the current budget, the reserve position, the last two years of minutes, and any assessment in progress. Read the minutes first — they say what the budget does not.

The master deed and bylaws define what you own, what the association owns, and what you may do. Whether a deck, a parking space or a basement storage area is yours exclusively or is common area with exclusive use is a distinction that matters enormously at resale.

The budget and reserves tell you whether the association is funding future work or deferring it. A low fee with no reserve is not a saving; it is a special assessment you have not received yet.

The minutes are where the truth lives. Roof discussions, disputes with neighbours, ongoing water intrusion and the tone of the association all show up there before they show up anywhere else. Two years is the minimum worth reading.

The 6D certificate is issued at closing and confirms the seller owes the association nothing. Its absence is a closing-day problem, so it belongs on your attorney's checklist early.

Small associations need more scrutiny, not less

In a three-unit conversion, a roof is divided by three. In a two-hundred-unit building it is divided by two hundred. The smaller the association, the more a single deferred repair can cost you personally.

Greater Boston is full of two- and three-unit conversions, and buyers often treat them as simpler than a large building. Financially they are riskier. A large association has professional management, a funded reserve and predictable governance; a three-unit association is you and two neighbours agreeing on money.

Ask specifically: is there a reserve, has a reserve study ever been done, and how were the last two major repairs paid for? If the answer is that everyone wrote a cheque, that is the model you are joining.

Ask also about owner-occupancy levels. A heavily rented association behaves differently, and some lenders price that difference into your mortgage or decline the building outright.

What actually drives the fee

Not the price of the unit. The fee reflects what is being maintained and staffed — a concierge, a garage, an elevator, a pool and a professionally managed reserve all cost money every month, forever.

This is why a citywide average fee is a meaningless number, and why this page does not publish one. A self-managed three-unit conversion and a full-service Seaport tower can differ by an order of magnitude, and both are Boston condominiums.

The question worth asking is not whether the fee is high but whether it is sufficient. A fee that covers the building's actual costs and funds its reserve is doing its job. A low fee in a building with an ageing roof and no reserve is a deferred bill.

On buildings advertised with no association fee: they usually still have shared costs, just informally arranged. That is a governance question rather than a saving, and it is worth understanding exactly how a shared roof gets replaced.

Condominium or small multifamily?

A two- or three-family where you live in one unit is the other common route into ownership here. It is more work and more control — you are the association rather than a member of one.

The financing can be favourable, since an owner-occupied multifamily is treated as a primary residence, and the rent offsets the carrying cost. The trade is that you are a landlord, with the obligations that carries under Massachusetts law — which is a genuinely regulated relationship, not an informal one.

It also changes the tax position. Boston's residential exemption applies to the owner-occupied portion; an investor-owned unit does not qualify. Somerville and Dorchester are where most first-time multifamily buyers look.

Questions about Boston condos