You own a condo. That’s how it works. The shared land is a different matter.
Please stop. You’re making embarrassingly bad arguments.
If you can’t read the article I referred to, I guess you can’t exactly discuss this in good faith now can you.
The condo association controls how long you have that condo for. If they can force you to sell it at any time, then you don’t own it, do you…
Can you make improvements to the condo? Put in a jacuzzi tub? Oh – you can’t. How about building new walls? Can’t do that either. Can you choose a different internet service provider? Oh, weird – condos have contracted providers that you’ve gotta use. For all of this “I can totally own a condo”…you sure aren’t able to do the things which beget actual ownership, now can you? So you can purchase temporary residence in a housing-cubicle – but don’t pretend that is actual ownership. If you owned it, you could demolish everything within and nobody would care. But that’s not the case. So you don’t own it.
If I wanted to demolish my house tomorrow, I could. Because I own it. If I want to add walls, change electrical, paint it a new color, change the roof, add a second floor, add a jacuzzi tub, all things that I can do. Granted I have to get permits for some of those things, but condos control IF you can do those things at all.
That’s not ownership. That’s a lease.
I’m perfectly happy living without those things. Especially if it means my neighbor’s stupid Jacuzzi tub isn’t going to cause mold in the building or come hurdling down through my ceiling.
If I don’t like my condo, I’ll sell it and buy a better one, as there are improvements that I did which didn’t involve changing walls or electrical (which you can do with board approval if you really want to), like updating the kitchen and bathrooms and floors, and therefore it has most likely appreciated in value since I bought it. I have exclusive rights to the proceeds from the sale because I own it and I really have never had any urge do anything stupid that would piss off the HOA (re: my neighbors) because I’m a decent person and considerate of others. The community is worth that small sacrifice of not being an asshole.
But ultimately, I’m not owning it as an investment vehicle. I’m owning it to live in and to keep my money in my own name instead of putting it into some landlord’s pocket.
Demolition will not be necessary because I don’t care about the land underneath it, I care about the building itself.
The internet is perfectly good and if it’s not, my neighbors will probably agree, and we can vote to change providers because we are all voting members of the HOA, but ideally that would be something provided by the city as it doesn’t really make sense to run multiple lines for multiple providers in a dense urban setting. In that case, the whole city gets to vote! I have up to 600mbps fiber optic in my current complex, though, so I don’t think that will really be necessary.
I’m sure you’ll find a problem with that, but you’re way out in the country and don’t like cities anyways, so catering to you would probably not be very healthy for the city.
Can I haz walkable city now?
