Homeowner Association Fees

[Anonymous]

This may get moved but didn't see another spot for this question.  I am looking at a new townhome and the HOA fees are pretty high for that area ($185 per month).  I have 2 questions:

1. Does anyone know if these are negotiable?
2. Is it possible (assuming the home has some equity) of having say 2 years of these fees rolled into your mortgage?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

This may get moved but didn't see another spot for this question.  I am looking at a new townhome and the HOA fees are pretty high for that area ($185 per month).  I have 2 questions:

1. Does anyone know if these are negotiable?
2. Is it possible (assuming the home has some equity) of having say 2 years of these fees rolled into your mortgage?

Thanks!

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1. Most likely not because these fee's pay for the the groundskeeping during the summer/winter as well as water and/or laundry and/or pool.

2.  The only way to do that is to have the seller agree to the higher price and apply those funds to it but then you run the risk of the appraisal coming back less than the agreed upon price.

[Anonymous]

Generally I don't think you can roll them over as they do tend to change every year.

They are non negotiable

They will be counted towards DTI even if you roll some into the loan/prepay some of them.

[Anonymous]

You can't roll them up or negotiate them. The fees are set by the board of the HOA and the fees are not included in the mortgage. The fees are a separate from your mortgage and are paid directly to the HOA.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
You can't roll them up or negotiate them. The fees are set by the board of the HOA and the fees are not included in the mortgage. The fees are a separate from your mortgage and are paid directly to the HOA.

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That may not always be the case. In our case (until we found out at the *very* last minute -- read: 1 hour before closing -- that our teeny-tiny area of the subdivision was exempt), we had "rolled" one year's of HOA fees into the loan AND had it set up to pay into escrow with our mortgage. Since it would be considered part of our mortgage payment, it was figured into DtI (of course).

I think that *might* depend on the HOA. Some states/HOAs stipulate that if you don't pay your HOA fees, they can take your house (well, really, that they can put a lien on your house). In a case like that, I think it makes sense for the mortgage lender to demand escrow on HOA fees. CountryWide was insisting (again, until it happened to be that we were exempt from paying them at all).

HOAs are EVIL. So glad we dodged the bullet on that one. 

[demi]

If its a new development, you may be able to negotiate with the developers to get them to pay for a year or two...my neighbors did that in my development.  I didn't, but did manage to get some other stuff thrown in.  But, for some reason I have yet to figure out, I was prepaid for about 5 months.  My HOA dues are 213.08 a month (still wondering what the 8 cents does).