buy and hold condos?

[Keith Waterhouse]

What do you experts think of this? I feel it may be a safe bet if you can aquire for the right price. The HOA fee covers all ext. maintenance,lawn, snow,etc.

[Jon Holdman]

The 50% rule says all expenses, including vacancies, taxes, insurance, HOA fees, and everything else will be 50% of the rent. Don't try to break it up any finer than that. Yes, some amount of your expenses will be inside the HOA fee. But HOA fees can be all over the map. They can be low because the HOA is flush with cash. They can be low because the HOA board is incompentent (most are, IMHO) and is charging too little. They will suddenly have a big expense and your fees with skyrocket.

That's really no different than SFR properties. You'll have many months when your only expenses are taxes and insurance and they're well below 50%. Then, you'll have that killer month when you need a furnace or sewer line and expenses will be 500%.

With a condo, look for some reason that expense might be higher than 50%.

In case you haven't guessed, I think condos are bad investments. They fall first, and come back last. You have an HOA and so many expenses are out of your control. Why bother? If you say, because they're cheap, realize there's a reason.

The best approach to condos is to either build then when the market is booming, or to buy properties that are amenable to conversions.