HOA fees rising like everything else, says Trulia
Living in a world with amenities that don't require your actual maintenance does sound tempting. No one likes doing yardwork or cleaning out the pool filters. Which is probably why living in a world where other people handle that maintenance for you is becoming increasingly expensive.
New research from Trulia reports that homeowner's association fees are growing out a rate that outpaces actual home prices. Between 2005 and 2015, home prices grew just more than 15 percent, but HOAs jumped nearly 33 percent. Nationally, the average fee was about $331.In Philadelphia, research shows we have the fourth-highest average HOA fees of the nation's top 50 metro areas. In 2015, that rate was about $449 a month, behind San Francisco, Long Island and New York. That's a 47.6 percent leap over fees from 2005.
Researchers found older buildings and those with more units tended to have higher HOAs. Buildings built between 1960 and 1969 tended to be about $90 dollars a month more expensive than buildings built after 2005. The same research also found that the fewer units a building held, the smaller the fees. All of this makes sense locally only when you forget recent bloom in luxury condo buildings, where your HOAs support high-end amenities like car services, private yoga studios and pet grooming.
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