Reply to starting to think downsizing to a townhouse not worth it

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My wife and I own a SFH in Sterling and we’re considering downsizing to a condo near the Reston Town Center when we retired. There’s a current listing that fits what we would be interested in (https://www.redfin.com/VA/Reston/1830-Fountain-Dr-20190/unit-1004/home/9855887) for $875k. However the HOA is $1365/mo, which is more than ten times what we’re paying now. That’s on the high end, but some of the other HOA fees are in the $800-$1000/month range. I don’t know if we can justify that, and really wonder: what do you get for that? Where does all that money go?
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First, you must find out what the HOA fee includes.  
We live in a city in a condo building.  For us, it includes most of our Home insurance.  All we have to insure is our belongings and Liability and enough to cover the $50k master HOA Deductible (if you are the cause of damages to other units you must pay the HOA deductible).  So instead of $4-5K for insurance on a $2M home (we live in an area where you need earthquake insurance), we pay only $1800 (and that includes our jewelry and artwork/etc).  So we are saving $2-3K/year.  I no longer have to replace the roof every 20-25 years (at $40-50K each time), the H20 heater is included in the HOA, no more garage door replacement or new opener, so is everything except what's inside my condo.  When you add up what I used to pay versus what's included now, I come out about even.  The extra HOA fees include the perks of a 24 hour concierge, full time building manager and maintenance team of 2, cleaning of the common areas, Heat/lights/AC for common areas, maintenance of the elevators and huge garage door, etc.  My packages are always "Signed for" (no more waiting around all day for a wine delivery), in fact they are also delivered to my front door several times per day by the concierge.

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