Three-bedroom madness

[danbrotherston]

If I save each year to spend on maintenance for my SFH and move to another house after so many years, my personal saved maintenance fund moves with me. The portion of my condo fees that go into the reserve fund, stay in the reserve fund when I move.

This is a pretty good point.

In a healthy market, buyers would take into account the amount the condo board has in reserve, and this would be reflected in the sale price you could expect. In reality, we know that not all buyers think about the financial health of the condo corporation at all (hopefully this is changing in the more balanced market we're in as compared with four or five years ago).

I absolutely reviewed the reserve fund study for my condo before I moved in. But I also had a home inspection done on our house before I moved in and negotiated a lower price because there were several maintenance items (roof, furnace) that were 17+ years old.

I don't think "moving my maintenance fund with me" actually matters, unless you think you can convince someone to buy your old property while it is in a state of deferred maintenance, without pricing that maintenance into the price.