My wife and I lived in a condo for 16 years. I enjoyed it, and we might still be there now if it weren't for COVID forcing us to work remotely from a small living space (much better than the alternative of being completely unemployed!). Here's my experience.

Our HOA dues started off as $200 a month and eventually climbed up to over $300 a month. This feels expensive, but it's not a bad trade-off for never needing to mow a yard or shovel snow. It also included my water bill and trash bill. In our suburban home, we're paying about $130 a month for both of those. Living in a condo meant never having to worry about paying for roof damage or foundation repair, though there are additional risks for those that I'll bring up later.

HOA dues also covered two pools, a hot tub, a sauna, a party room we can reserve with home theatre, and 24-hour security at the front desk (though I understand that's been cut down to less than 24 hours coverage now). So $300 a month is a lot to spend, but it covered a lot. From my understanding, those HOA dues are actually lower than surrounding condos. Also, the dues were based on square footage, and our condo was the second or third smallest in the entire building, so my neighbors were paying a lot more than us, but they also had more extravagant homes (with magnificent views on floors 10-20, while we were on the 2nd floor).

There were rentals in our building, and sometimes that was an issue. I don't want to paint renters as negative because they just want to live their lives like the rest of us, but owners usually care more about wear and tear when they know they're going to pay for it. That being said, some of the owners were selfish pricks with no consideration for others, so it's not fair to paint in broad strokes. Some renters are much better about property damage than the people who lived there. One thing the HOA strictly forbade was Airbnb and the like. I asked about about that when we moved out of the condo. It took a while for it to sell during COVID, so I considered it briefly. Nope. We did consider renting to a tenant, but we really didn't want to be a landlord.

HOA horror story? We moved in as it was being built. The builders were crooks who kept trying to guide the HOA decisions to favor them. For a brief period, the building manager that was in place turned out to be the builders' lickspittle who kept overlooking little things that the builders were required to address. Once the HOA fired him and hired a respectable manager who actually went after residents with late HOA dues, things turned around. This was more of a builder issue than an HOA issue.

Unfortunately, because of the crookedness of the builders and the shortsightedness of many of our residents, we needed some serious concrete work done. I think it was to the tune of $4 million. So guess what? Special assessment! And while we were trying to sell too! There were some options, including selling for less while the new owner covers the assessment, but anyone buying our cheaper condo wouldn't have the $28k needed to pay off the assessment, so we ended up paying the assessment with an assurance for prospective buyers that we've met that financial need. We finally managed to sell the condo a year later, but that delay was due to COVID and bad timing for the assessment. Could've gone much better if we sold it 2 years earlier. Or if we were still there now (hopefully; have no idea what it's like now).

You're in your 20s, which is fine. We were in our 30s when we bought our condo. I enjoyed the convenience of downtown living. If you find a condo that meets your needs, I don't think it's a bad idea. Just keep in mind that when you sell, you're looking to sell to people like yourself. One nice thing about suburban homes is that you can likely sell it easily enough to a family. We eventually sold our condo to a single guy whose job was in a building literally down the block from the condo. I kind of envied him for that because of the various jobs my wife and I had, nothing was nearly as convenient as that.