Condo, co-op or triple-decker: how the monthly fees compare

Three buildings stand within two hundred yards of each other off Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. Two-bedroom units in all three sold last year within $60,000 of one another. Their monthly fees are not within $500 of one another.

The three buildings

The co-op looks like the expensive one and it is not, quite. Its fee carries the heat and the hot water for the whole building, which in a Cambridge winter is $150 a month the other two owners pay separately, and it carries the underlying mortgage on the building, which the other two do not have.

What a low fee is telling you

The triple-decker at $180 is three neighbors with a shared bank account and no manager. It works until the roof goes. When it does, three owners split a $34,000 bill in the same month, and if one of them cannot pay, the other two find out what their reserve fund is really worth.

Ask for the reserve balance and the last two years of minutes in any building with fewer than ten units. A healthy reserve in this market runs to about ten percent of a year's operating budget per unit. Below that, the low fee is a loan you are taking from your own roof.

What no fee covers

• Anything inside your own door, from the boiler to the windows in most condo documents
• The deductible on the master insurance policy, which is often $10,000 and is charged to whoever's unit the water came from
• Special assessments, voted by the trustees and payable whether or not you agreed
• Your own property tax, which the city bills you directly and quarterly

The question to ask first

Ask what the fee was three years ago, rather than what it is today. A fee that has moved with inflation is a building somebody is running. A fee that has not changed since 2019 is a building where the owners are about to get a letter.