Well, that is by far the most expensive part of the UK so not all that surprising.
Well yes, anyone can buy land, whether anyone can actually afford it is another thing entirely.
As already noted - in the US an “apartment” is something you rent. If you buy it then it’s not called an “apartment” anymore, a different term is used (usually but not always “condo” or “condominium”). Part of the confusion is lack of perception that you’re dealing with a difference in dialect between the US and many other English speaking places.
That might be location dependent - I frequently hear people talk about buying or owning “apartments”.
Certainly possible - the US is a big place. I based my statement on the five states I’ve lived in. There are 45 others that may in fact differ.
Nitpick: it’s rite of passage (i.e., a ritual), not right.
At least this thread has cleared up my long confusion about what a condo actually is. I had this idea that it was a holiday home or seaside apartment - perhaps because so many of them appear to talked about in reference to people retiring to Florida.
Another question - if you rent an apartment, then after a couple of years agree to buy it from the landlord, does your name for it change?
(Of course, even ‘apartment’ is a bit new fangled/estate agent speak for us Brits. To us, they’re flats - owned or rented).
There’s a lot of paperwork involved in changing a rental apartment into a condo. You’ll need to file legal work to set up the condo association and all the legal/insurance infrastructure around it. You can’t just buy a single unit out of a building without converting the whole building over. If you’re renting a condo unit from someone, and then decide to buy it from them, you might never call it an apartment to begin with. You’re renting a condo.
I live in a triple decker that was owned by a family and rented out to three tenants. At some point they converted the building into condos, and sold off the three units. We now have a condo association with legal documents, insurance, rules, monthly fees, a bank account, etc. The big thing in my neck of the woods is buying triple deckers or duplexes, fixing them up or expanding them, and converting them to condos. The local renters are being driven out of the market since the condos are targeted at upscale buyers.
The only circumstance in which this is likely to happen is if the building is already a condominium, and the owner of a unit is renting it out. So you would be renting a condo, and then you’d own it. It’s possible for a normal apartment building to be converted into condominium ownership, but it would be a major hassle for a landlord to do it for just one tenant.
My NYC-based sister-in-law has talked about “buying” an apartment. But it sounds wrong to my ears.
Ok, I think I understand the complication - it doesn’t really crop up here because most flats are leasehold, as I said above, which means the owner of the flat doesn’t own the land, and the land owner effectively performs the work of a condo association - ie upkeep of common areas, building insurance and the like (for which the flat owners or renters would pay a service charge). So it doesn’t matter whether flats are owned or rented.
It’s very common in my experience for people who have lived for most of their lives in either a single-family house or a two or three family house to retire and buy a condo ( or co-op, since I live in NYC). Sometimes it’s in Florida or Arizona or some other state with a better climate - but sometimes it’s in the same area. Part of the reason is the lack of maintenance ( if I move when I retire, it will not be to a single-family house ) and another part is that there are many age-restricted condo/coop communities that provide amenities that aren’t as common in rentals.
You’ve just described my parents (minus the age-restricted bit - although we certainly have those too). They downsized ten years ago to a ground floor flat in a development and now have a better social life than me.
They’ll be tickled to learn they live in a ‘condo’.
What you’re describing here seems very analogous to a typical condominium arrangement in the US, at least in the day to day practicalities. We own a condo in Atlanta that was our primary home (but we rent it out now that we left the state). There’s a homeowner’s association (HOA) that is responsible for common area maintenance, insurance on the building as a whole, the water bill, etc. We’re charged a monthly fee to cover all of this. The HOA is managed by a board chosen out of the individual condo owners, but pays a service provider to do all the actual admin work (collecting fees, etc.).
I suppose the main difference is HOA versus “land owner”? My understanding is that the HOA is a distinct legal entity that owns the land, but that the individual condo owners essentially own the “shares” in the association. That doesn’t mean you directly own the land, but it does give you explicitly enumerated voting rights.
Are there any cases in the UK where “land owner” is an association of that style, owned by the condo owners? Or is it typically a completely unrelated party who just bought the land and built some condos on it?
An apartment building is different in that there is likely one entity that owns the land, the building, and the individual units. And they just rent out and manage all the units collectively. In the condo case even if a condo is being rented there isn’t an entity like that: renters are dealing with individual condo owners as their landlords. If tenants don’t obey HOA rules, etc. the owner is the one who is going to be yelled at. And the HOA may have rules about renting out condos (things like “only 50% of the units can be rentals” are common since banks apparently get nervous about mortgages against condos in buildings with too many renters).
I think the distinction being made that you were responding to was saying that it’s very rare (completely non-existent?) for a building to be a hybrid model where some units are “condos” owned by individuals and some are “apartments” owned and rented out by a central entity. Building complexes are either completely apartments and centrally rented out or completely condos that are individually owned (but perhaps rented out by the individual owners).
Yes, there’s something called ‘share of freehold’, which effectively means the owner of each property has a share in the land that the building/s sits on. In practical terms, I believe the freehold is normally owned by a company, in which the property owners each have shares. The company then makes the owners also leaseholders, with all the legal/financial commitments of normal leaseholders - ie paying a service charge. But it probably gives you more say in what that service charge covers and how much it should be.
Yeah, to me too. My New York-based friends and relations will usually say “co-op” rather than “apartment” but newer buildings are all condos. If they are shopping for a particular condo, they will usually say “condo.” Maybe “buying an apartment” is trendier New York lingo to encompass potentially buying either a condo or co-op but I haven’t really heard this from native New Yorkers so I don’t know.
This sounds directly analogous to the US HOA model. I’m curious about the third party land owner model though. The HOA at least gives authority to the collection of home owners, who get to make big decisions as a group. I assume if HOA management went nuts with fees, etc. there’d be pushback.
But in the separate land owner case how does that work? Can the land owner unilaterally decide to bump the rates or forgo essential maintenance? What if they want to sell the land and demolish the building? I assume there’s a contract that outlines the limitations and responsibilities, but how friendly are these typically to one side or the other?
There’s an equivalent to the third party land owner in the US. It is probably more common with mobile (“manufactured” ) homes, but I’ve seen places where a company owns the land, provides some services and people own their site-built concrete block house and pay lot rent every month. I do remember from when I looked at a couple that the landowner can bump up the rates or lower the level of services unilaterally - but it never occurred to me to ask if they could sell the land and demolish a house. Probably because I was considering buying a mobile home and they can be moved.
Typically, yes. Buying into a co-op or condo didn’t used to be that common and some people would keep an apartment for decades. Sometimes just because of rent control, but for people who wanted to live in cities there weren’t many options. My great aunt lived in the same apartment in Queens, NY, for over 50 years. Her son became quite wealthy and could have given her any place to live that she wanted, but she just wanted to live in that same apartment.
Well to be clear, for a long time German apartments for the most part simply didn’t come with kitchen cabinets, and you had to buy them. I’m not sure how true that still is though.