things to consider when buying an apartment

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camomile09

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i just wanna know the things that u need to consider when buying an apartment. looking forward to all your advice. cheers.
 
Have never lived in one but some of the things that crop up regularly in the Homes and Gardens Forum are

(a) take Management Company fees into account on your outgoings
(b) the noise levels
(c) most likely no satellite dishes allowed
(d) maybe no wooden floors allowed

You could try using the search option on the front page of AAM and see from the headings if anything of interest shows up.

You may also find something of interest over on
 
All of this is from experience.

Try to avoid a development with a low proportion of owner occupiers. Only OOs care about keeping the place in good order.
Most renters don't stay very long so they don't care. There are exceptions to the rule.
Bad renters do things like throwing cigarette butts out of their windows and not disposing of junk mail addressed to them.
Leaving smelly bin bags in the hallway because they're too lazy to bring it to the bin is another one. Attempting to dispose of inappropriate items by placing them beside the bins. E.g. barely used exercise machines, furniture, carpets, even old cars.
Go back a couple of times on a week night after 11:15PM to see how quiet things are.

If you're a FTB I'd avoid a brand new development as most of the problems will still not be dealt with.
Amateur landlords and landlords that should know better learning the hard way with poor initial choices of tenants is the main root cause of problems. Ideally you need a strong group of OOs and a decent management company's agent/groundsman to stamp some order on the place. It will probably take a few years to flush out most of the problems during which time you'll have a lot of frustration.
 
Other things to think of (mainly if you are looking at an older apartment):
- apart from the management fees, are there any big maintenance items coming up (boilers, roof, lifts, electronic gates)
- any vandalism in the previous year (adds to costs)
- hanging/airing washing in view of outside (usually not allowed)
- pets, are you allowed to shoot other peoples' if they have them?
- does the block have enough parking spaces (if they are pooled spaces - many apartments are now multiple occupancy/multiple car)
- is the heating available 24 hours (if central boiler) - we got a nasty shock with a December baby, feeding at night when the heating was off midnight-7 am. Also, my commute started at 6.45, so many cold mornings in the winter!
- do the phone lines physically support broadband - the place we were in had very old phone lines, which could barely support dial-up, never mind broadband
 
Lots of useful points in the earlier posts above; and I'll just one more:
- It might sound obvious but 'future proof' your purchase, i.e. make sure that it'll suit you for as long as you plan to live there. If you're looking at a one-bed my advice would be to see if you can stretch your budget to a second bedroom.
 
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