Quote:
Originally Posted by frayedends
I'm there enough to know how well it's run. But my warning to people buying new, first check out the bond and the payment and the interest, that they do not mention. They tell you there is a bond paid over 30 years. They never mention the interest and you have to go onto the CDD website to find payment info.
Second, the maintenance fee that they never mentioned at all. I'm sure it's buried in the closing docs somewhere. Even then, I'm perfectly fine with the fee that I signed up for because I did my research. I also expect increases because maintenance costs obviously increase. But to raise the fee by $330 (56%) after only 1 year seems absurd to me.
|
Never mentioned at all:
On my annual bill I have six lines, property tax is one, the bond is another, and the maintenance fee is a third. I don't recall the realtor sitting down with me and going over each of the lines on the bill. I can say it probably wasn't mentioned but then neither were three other lines on the bill.
Interest on the bond:
Not as significant as it might be since it is probably low (maybe not for Denham) and you can't make advance payments to lower the amount of interest you pay. You have a choice, pay the 360 months (or whatever) or pay the current balance on the principal. We chose to pay the principal to have no bond payment going forward. Since the interest might vary for each "unit" (neighborhood) I wouldn't expect a realtor to have the number handy. The information on the payments is readily available on districtgov.org.
Maintenance increase:
56% is a huge increase, no doubt about that. $900 is a lot to pay for maintenance fee, no doubt about that either. Three possible reasons for the increase: 1. A new CDD is just now finding out what its expenses really are; 2. A new PWAC for some of the southern districts might have just found out what its expenses really are; or, 3. The SECO lighting increase might have hit the maintenance fee (though $330 seems steep for this). Along with the bond amortization info, districtgov.org also has a link to the minutes of your CDD board meetings. Find the recent meeting where the maintenance fee increase was discussed and see if any reason was given.