Condominiums in Seattle

What does a condominium look like?

A residential condominium is not a building. It is one form of shared property ownership. In a condominium, an owner is deeded exclusive ownership of a specific space together with a percentage ownership of common spaces, such as hallways, lobbies, outdoor spaces, walls surrounding the individual spaces, garage and storage areas, and the ground on which the condominium stands.

A Condominium Is Not a Single Family Home

The greatest difference between a condominium home and a single family residence is not that the condominium probably looks like an apartment instead of a house. (The properties in the two photos in this section are condominiums, not single family homes.) The greatest difference is that the owner of a condominium becomes a member of a Home Owners’ Association (an HOA).

Anyone purchasing a condominium should be prepared to participate actively in the operations of the HOA. The association, through a board of directors elected by the members, manages the common elements of the building. Its fundamental responsibility is to preserve the value for all owners by maintaining the building. Most boards employ professional managers to assist them.

A condominium purchaser should also be prepared to pay a fair share of the expenses of managing the property. HOAs are run on homeowners’ dues which are generally paid monthly to cover shared expenses such as water, sewer and garbage bills, insurance on the building, cleaning, maintenance of common areas, gardening. A well-managed condominium association plans for long term expenses like roofs and painting. The HOA budget should include reserves that will be sufficient to pay for such projects when they become necessary.

Condominiums: Newcomers in American Housing

Condominiums are relative newcomers to American housing. They were rare before 1961, when Congress enabled the FHA to insure purchase loans for condominiums. They became possible in Washington State in 1963, when the legislature passed the Horizontal Regimes Act. In the late 1970s growing interest in condominiums spurred the first major period of condominium creation in the Seattle area.

The creation of a condominium does not depend on new construction. Since a condominium is a legal structure, existing apartment buildings can be transformed into condominiums. A significant number of the better Seattle apartments built in the 1920s have been converted to condominium ownership.

Condominiums were preceded in Seattle by co-operative apartments. Because of rent controls imposed during World War II, many owners of apartment buildings found it more profitable to sell their buildings to the tenants rather than maintain them as rentals. A co-operative is a corporation which owns the building and issues “proprietary leases” for individual units to those who own shares in the corporation. There are two practical differences between a condominium and a co-operative. First, because there is only one lender who will finance co-op sales, co-ops are slightly more expensive to finance. Second, because the buyer of a co-op owns shares in a corporation rather than the individual unit, it remains common practice for the boards of co-ops to retain the right to refuse to sell to anyone for any reason — remember that Richard Nixon was famously turned down by a co-op on Manhattan.

Because of shared ownership of basic systems like plumbing and the roof, the purchaser of a condominium is legally entitled to receive either a Public Offering Statement (for new construction or conversion) or a Re-Sale Certificate (for re-sales). These documents include the basic rules which owners must live by — pets or no pets, rental restrictions, aesthetic controls, modification of units — and financial information. A purchaser should ask to have included 2 years’ worth of minutes of HOA meetings to gain information about any pending problems.

Condominiums in Seattle

Condominium homes can be found throughout the city, but there is a significant concentration at the center. Nearly 60% of Seattle’s condominium homes lie in the belt from Lake Washington to Puget Sound between the Ship Canal and I-90. About 15% are located in the northwest quarter of the city, especially in Fremont and Ballard. Another 11% are found in West Seattle. Most of the remaining 14% are in the northeast quarter. Southeast Seattle has only 3% of the city’s condominiums.

There are now about 25,000 condominium homes in Seattle. The ownership of buildings can be converted to condominiums, and about 6,000 of Seattle’s condominiums were built before the Horizontal Regimes Act. About 2,000 of these were built before 1930, and among those are some of the most sought-after units in the city; the best-known of these are buildings developed by Fred Anhalt. Since 1970 the addition of condominiums to Seattle’s housing has been steady: 5,000 in the 1970s, 6,000 in the 1980s, and 6,000 in the 1990s.

Since 2000 the rate of condominium development has nearly doubled. Through the end of 2006, nearly 5,000 new condominiums had been sold, and a substantial number of conversions have added to that total. At least 2,000-3,000 additional condominiums are under construction as of early 2007, including a large number of expensive units in the Downtown-Belltown-Lake Union area. The conversion of existing apartments to condominiums also continues.

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