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Some U.S. homeowners pay more in HOA fees than others do. LendingTree's new data shows exactly where costs run highest
Goh Rhy Yan / Unsplash
Buying a condo or a home inside a homeowners association often comes with an unstated second mortgage payment. HOA fees cover everything from landscaping and building insurance to elevator repairs and staff salaries, and in a growing number of buildings those bills now rival what buyers pay in property taxes each month. A shopper who budgets carefully for a mortgage payment can still get blindsided by an association fee that adds hundreds of dollars to the true cost of owning a home. Nationwide, nearly one in three homeowners in large cities now pays some kind of HOA or condo fee, and for millions of them that fee runs well past $500 a month.
Several forces are pushing those bills higher at once. Insurance premiums for the shared structures that HOAs are responsible for have climbed sharply in hurricane-prone and wildfire-exposed states, and older buildings across the country are reaching the age where major systems like roofs, elevators, and plumbing need expensive replacement rather than routine upkeep. A wave of new state laws passed after a deadly 2021 condo collapse in Florida has also forced associations nationwide to fund maintenance reserves they had been allowed to underfund for decades, turning years of deferred costs into today's dues. Older, denser housing markets are absorbing most of that increase. Those buildings carry the most deferred maintenance and the highest insurance exposure of any housing stock in the country.
