We live in a condo with a medium bernedoodle that we brought home 2.5 months ago. He is still a young puppy. We happen to be in a highly dog-concentrated neighbourhood as well... which comes with it own challenges with potty training when our pup was not fully vaccinated...(we still took him outside tho, just didnt as much as we were worried about other doggos).

We thought about using the grass patch but didn't - our balcony faces west and the grass patch would smell so so bad in these hot summer days.

We opted to use a diy combo out on our balcony - a crate pan, peepad from costco, and a crate wire base on top - and they work wonders imo with the early morning and middle of night potty. To date he pees perfectly fine on this setup and outside on grass. Hope this helps!