I thought a Condo was an apartment that you could buy? You get some shared green space and other shared facilities.
I saw a Condo for “rent”. What the heck is that?
If its rented, then isn’t it, by definition an apartment?
LOL
disclaimer, I own a house and have absolutely no interest in buying a glorified apartment. 
I lived in enough apartments that I know how much I hate them. Thin walls, your upstairs neighbors late night parties. The smell of weed in the breezeways. No thank you.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is the same as “House for Rent”
I assume this guy owns the condo and doesn’t want to sell. So he’s offering it for rent.
It just struck me funny because now its become an apartment again.
I’m surprised that doesn’t violate the condo association’s bylaws.
When I think of an apartment, I think of a single unit in a building that is maintained by a single company. The management company owns the whole building and manages all the units, of which I’m renting one.
A condo for rent would be a unit owned by an individual, and that individual is renting it out. The other units in the building are completely independent. Maybe the owners live there, maybe they are renting it out, etc.
As to what that means to you as a renter, it’s depends. If the whole building is condos, then likely there are more owners who live in their own condo. I would tend to guess it means people would treat it more like they own the place rather than someplace they’re just staying for a while. It also means each unit will have its own unique style, as each owner may have had their own design and upgrades put in.
That’s how it works here in Canada, at least. What makes it a “condo” is if there’s a legally registered Condominium Corporation, that is jointly owned by the people who individually own the specific units. Buying a unit automatically buys you a share in the Condo Corp.
Also, you can set up a condo corp for housing developments too, it’s not just for apartment-style buildings. In fact, there are some condos near me that even mix the two together.
Whether you can rent out your condo unit would depend on the bylaws of the particular corporation.
I lived in a condo apartment building that was originally designed as a rental investment opportunity for people who didn’t have enough money to buy a whole building. They’d buy one or more units in the condo, then rent them out. They maintained control of the condo via their votes in the annual general meetings, in which they selected the board.
Tax law changes in the early to mid 90s ruined the profitability of this plan, leading to a lot of the owners to start skimping on the building to try to limit their losses, so I picked up a unit at quite a discount. I think I paid the second-lowest price ever for a unit in the building. During my stay there, the building went from about 90% rental occupants to over 70% owner occupants, as the original investors sold off their units. We live-in owners eventually took over the board. That let us run the place much better, meaning I more than doubled my investment when I finally sold off.
As a cool side note, a few years later a cousin of mine moved to town and bought a unit there. My work on the board had made the place a much better long-term prospect.
My first condo was a townhouse. It’s never been an apartment.
Why would you think that? I’ve lived in a few condo developments and there were always units that were rented. It’s a business model for some condo developments.
It can be disallowed, and often is. I think a common rule is “no more than <x> percent of units can be rented at one time”. The main concern is that mortgage companies get nervous if a lot of the units are rentals, making condos in the building harder to sell. The rule tries to avoid that situation.
We rent out our “condo”. Our building has this rule, but units such as ours that were already rented at the time of enacting the rule are grandfathered in. I suspect there would be legal implications to yanking our rental income out from under us, but I’m not sure.
My condo building is structured like this. No more than 20% of the units can be occupied entirely by non-owners (to distinguish the case where the owner lives there and rents out a room to a tenant, which does not count against the cap.) I may even have to sell my unit if my tenants move out, since the building is at its cap and has a waitlist.
I also know of buildings where there is no cap. I know of no buildings that completely disallow owners to rent out their units, though I know of no reason why such a building couldn’t exist.
Apartments are normally owned as a block A building or buildings with subunit dwellings. Condos are owned by an individual. If the individual then wants to rent his condo, it’s a condo for rent. Some condos are row houses or duplexes or triplexes.
Have you really gotten to whatever age you are without having come across this concept?
StG
That to me is a surprising situation. I would think that once your unit was a rental, it could remain a rental, even if you switched tenants, and that people on the wait list would need to wait for you (or another unit) to take it off the rental market or sell it. It doesn’t seem fair to put your rental income at so much risk like that …
No, it’s “become” a condo that’s being rented.
I know of at least one. The condo complex a friend of mine used to own a condo in required that all condos be owner-occupied. So, you could rent out a room, but you had to live there.
It’s not an unreasonable choice for a condo association to make. Owners give up on the flexibility of renting out their condo when they don’t want to live there, but they also know that every one of their neighbors has a vested interest in keeping things nice.
I believe it was always thus, so there were no rented units to grandfather in.
I remember the condo craze in the eighties. A lot of apartment complexes remodeled and then sold the units as Condos. My wife and I looked at a couple while we were house hunting.
I’m aware they design and build new buildings with condos. I hope they have better soundproofing then is found in an apartment.
Reading an ad for a condo rental struck me as funny today. It’s a bit of an oxymoron. Anyway I needed a laugh today. There’s not much left to laugh about in the news. That’s for sure.
Apparently renting condos is pretty common. I didn’t know that before this thread.
In Singapore an apartment would refer to a single dwelling in a multi story block…we had an apartment. We contributed to cleaning of common corridors, lift maintenance etc.
A condo would be an apartment with additional recreational facilities…I. e a gym / pool / BBQ pit etc. Generally it would be gated and fenced with a security guard post.
I own a bunch of condos that I rent out. They are in several different buildings, each with different rules.
One building was only six units. When I bought it, I lived there, and the other five units were also owner-occupied. We didn’t have any professional management; we just managed the place on the fly. One by one, we all moved out, and none of us wanted to sell (it was a very hot neighborhood, investment-wise). Eventually, the building was all rentals. A few of the owners wanted to sell (for a huge profit) and found that none of their prospective buyers could get a mortgage, due to the zero percent owner occupancy! Finally, a developer made us an offer on the entire building, razed it, and built a much nice apartment building on the spot. We all made a bundle.
Another building I own in has a rule: nobody can own more than one unit that they don’t live in. I think they grandfathered the people who already had more than one, but those people can’t buy any more.
Another development (a townhouse development) doesn’t seem to have any limits on owner occupancy, although most units are owner occupied. I own four in that group, and have never been told there is a limit.
Anyway, owning and renting out condos is a good strategy, because I have a professional management company to do most of the work of maintaining the properties. It also means you are mostly dealing with relatively stable neighbors, interested in keeping a decent environment.
It’s fairly rare, but it’s possible for there to be single-family houses that are condos.
A single “entity” owns the entirety of an apartment. This may be an individual, a company, or a partnership. They rent out individual units to people who have no hige responsibility for the unit, beyond security deposits etc.
A condo owner has legal possession of the interior, often but not always “to the studs.” A condo association is responsible for the exterior and any common grounds, and collects fees to maintain them.
An owner may inhabit either, and it doesn’t change the status. An insurance policy for an apartment dweller covers personal property, for condo owners the interior, for home owners everything else.
That’s a general rule, YMMV. Someone renting a condo may call it an apartment.
Not really, since condo is about ownership structures not layout.
The wife and I are living in a condominium unit that we are renting. This is not an apartment complex, it is a condominium, with the complex consisting of three buildings. The owner of our unit lives in California. I’ve met him once, but we deal exclusively with a property agent. The owner has two other units in this complex, his sister one., all rented out. There used to be a rule at this complex that owners could not rent out their units until they had owned them for a certain length of time, six months I think it was, but I’ve heard they’ve done away with that now.
We like the place, it’s well located in Waikiki, maintained beautifully. It’s like living in a garden. Security is tight, with guards, gates and cameras keeping the itinerant crazies outside well at bay. Rules are strictly enforced, which pisses off a lot of people but suits us just fine. The only, and I mean only, problem is the property manager. Our unit’s owner has used her for years, literally decades, and she’s a sweet little old lady who lives in the complex herself, but god, she looks and acts close to 100. She should have retired long ago but keeps saying she can’t afford to, although everyone is pretty sure she has a load stashed away. Just last summer alone, she was in the hospital twice for weeks at a time due to elderly-style accidents. If we do need something seen to inside the unit, it’s an extreme hassle to get her to respond, but if it’s a matter related to her beloved yacht club a few blocks away, which she is always inviting her tenants to, she’ll get right back to you. Overall, we like it here though.
I’ve seen / heard of both models. In my building’s case, the HOA has decided that the problem you highlighted is less important that making sure that all owners get a chance (eventually) to rent their units, rather than reserving that right to the first 20% of owners to take advantage of it. I don’t really consider it unfair, since the rule has been the rule since day 1.