Remember when they called China dystopian because of that picture of the highway that goes around a house where the homeowner refused to sell it? Or the picture of the houses in a mall parking lot which also refused to sell to the developer? Well luckily good old Freedomland has an elegant solution that upholds the rights of the homeowner way better than the evil XiSeePee!
Why?
Because you don’t own the land, you own a piece of air inside someones else building.
That’s true if one person owns every other apartment in the building, but it could be the case that every apartment is owned by different people.
That’s usually the case here in Greece. No one owns the building itself and everyone pays a monthly amount towards the building’s utility bills (the costs of running the elevator, entrance lights etc). The larger your apartment the more you contribute. When the apartment is rented, the renter usually pays the bill, but when there’s maintenance costs involved (for example, the building’s elevator broke), the landlord pays that part.
I feel like there are so many ways to get scammed in this situation.
How so? You get a detailed bill each 2-3 months, and the percentage each apartment pays is always the same. It’s not a random dude pooling together money each month, there’s a detailed process involved. There are managerial firms that take over the process if the people at building decide so, at like 1 euro or so per apartment (per month)
The issues with this system are people not paying and that it’s harder to maintain the building before something breaks (plus “aesthetic” expenses, such as painting it) because people don’t want to pay more
It makes sense to live in it though, and to own it at that point.
It doesn’t make sense to own it and then rent it out.
I am talking about the property.
The building itself is owned by some sort of real estate/development group, they sell you rooms inside their building but the building itself is still theirs. So what happens if the owner group sells the building, who guarantees the property you bought inside the other property! Its like buying land inside the metaverse or something like that. It is the thing that is going on in the video!
That’s not how it works with condominium ownership in the US, once the units are sold originally. The building is owned, collectively, by the owners of the units.
For example, I own, as part of the collective condominium association, 1/36th of the building and grounds. I can’t sell that individually except as part of selling my entire unit to someone else. I, along with the other 35 unit owners, get to elect a volunteer board of directors for the condominium association each year.
Now the Association may decide to hire a professional management company to do the bookkeeping, the repairs and maintenance, etc., but that management company works at our board’s direction - not the other way around.
As to why anyone would choose to buy an “apartment” in a condo building (or larger complex of buildings)? In much of the USA, especially in urban, suburban, and even exurban areas, a condo is the only affordable home type for sale for retirees, young workers, even multiple-earner families. Where I live in the southeastern United States, a condo starts at about $150,000 while even a small single family standalone home that isn’t falling apart costs at least $350,000.
At least with owning a condo instead of renting a similar apartment, I actually own something, and benefit from rising property value as increased equity, rather than as increased rent bill. Yes the condo fee for that collective management and maintenance can and does go up with increased costs (as voted by our elected board) but the value of my property goes up faster (mostly). And as an owner, I can pass it down to family, I can take a home equity loan against it if that makes financial sense to me, I can rent it out if I move but want to keep it in the family.
Yet the real state lawyer in the video clearly mentions that the developers have the ability to terminate these associations in that state (idk about other), which effectively means they are the owners. He also mentions that there are more cases coming up too.