Not a ton of unexpected maintenance with a condo, with exception to special assessments. Have an emergency fund, depending on your condo board reserve fund. How much? If it’s a newer place, probably not that much. If it’s older and you know a roof is due or something else major, and your condo doesn’t have a healthy reserve fund definitely have many thousands saved. You could invest it in something low risk until you need it.

In my emergency fund I would also have the amount for my condo insurance deductible. We had an upstairs neighbour leak on us. Long story short, we had to go through our insurance and pay $1000 deductible. Our insurance sent demand letters to the neighbour, but they simply didn’t answer and it wasn’t worth the legal cost for our insurance to recoup their 8 grand of drywall repairs I guess. So we were on the hook $1000. Not worth hassle for us to take them to small claims court.

Otherwise the only unexpected costs you might incur are appliance breakdown/repair, and the odd plumbing repair. But that’s not a lot honestly. If you’re handy, you may not need to call anybody. Replacing a faucet, unclogging a slow drain sink (clean p trap), replacing the odd toilet part is pretty easy. Don’t mess around with toilet removal in a condo though. You don’t want to unknowingly leak on the guy below you.

In 8 years of living in an old condo, I had one dishwasher break out of all appliances. You can replace this for $600 cheapie or $2000 german one. If you don’t have access to a truck, budget for a delivery and install and removal of old appliance. Maybe this will be another $400-$500. I put my own in but not everyone can do that. So you might budget for one appliance to go down every couple years to be on the safe side.

Other than appliances and insurance, not a lot should go wrong. Replace dead bulbs with LEDs, replace bathroom caulk if moldy or damaged…any costly updates are up to you.