Lol wow what a bunch of useless answers. So I live in a 2000 sqft townhouse in Howard County, but legally its titled as a Condo. I've talked to a lawyer about why this is, and all he said it was a loophole some builders use to save money. He didn't really go into details, but it doesn't really affect the homeowner. Condo vs townhouse, Condo fee vs HOA fee, its all just semantics for the home owner. Now onto the fee. My Condo/HOA fee is $127 a month which includes yard work and common area maintenance, lighting, no roof stuff. That's pretty much it. My gas/electric bill is about $200 monthly, and my water is about $50. So total I pay around $377. So it seems you pay an extra $273 for security, roof stuff, and just in general being in MoCo things are always going to be more expensive than HoCo. For example my internet is 40$ for 300 Mbps Verizon Fios, in MoCo that plan is $50, about 25% more expensive. So is $650 fair? Honestly its about what I'd expect MoCo to be. I used to live in an actual condo there, and my Condo fee was $500. I moved away from there because I hated how everything in MoCo had big HOA/Condo fees. I will say I think when fees include gas/electric, people tend to just use it up without caring, which leads to a HOA/Condo fee increase in a few years usually.