You may not know it, but what we call a “house” in Austin has run into a semantics challenge. The photos to the left are of homes in a new neighborhood in which one of my buyers just purchased a new home. Look at the pictures. Do you see “houses” or “condos”?
These particular homes are officially condos, but they are also detached single family homes, or what we would normally call a “house”. If you drive through the neighborhood, you see houses, but if you want to own a home in the neighborhood, you’ll purchase a “condo” that looks like a house.
The semantics challenge becomes an issue in how a property is listed for sale in the MLS. Some Austin Realtors have been listing detached condos such as these as “houses” in the MLS, which is incorrect. The enforcement people at Austin Board of Realtors have been changing these listings from “house” to “condo” when they catch them, which has infuriated some Realtors.
Listing these properties as “condos” doesn’t seem right either because the homes are not what most buyers would call a condo. They are closer to a house than a condo in appearance and lifestyle. You have no common walls and you have your own fenced yard, trees, your own sprinkler system, a driveway and garage. You are responsible for all exterior siding maintenance and your own roof if it leaks or needs repair. That’s essentially just like owning a house.
But if you purchase a home and don’t own the lot it sits on but instead have fractional ownership of the entire development, and pay HOA fees to maintain the common areas and “roads” (uh, parking lot shaped like a road), then in fact you haven’t purchased a house as we legally and traditionally define one, you’ve purchased a condo.
What upsets Realtors though is that listing a house that is legally a condo in the condo section of MLS means that it won’t be exposed to nearly as many buyers as it would if it came up in “house” searches.
Most home buyers don’t want a condo, they want a house. Furthermore, if you’re my house buyer and you want to purchase a real house where you own the home and the lot it sits on, we don’t want your MLS search results being polluted with listings that in fact are not legally houses but are instead condo homes.
So what’s the answer?
