Video: Difference of a Condo vs. an Apartment | Home Guides

Difference of a Condo vs. an Apartment

A condo and an apartment are two very different entities and are treated as such in the eyes of the law. Find out about the difference between a condo and an apartment with help from a real estate professional in this free video clip.

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Hi, my name is Michael Chadwick, and I'm a licensed real estate salesperson with Bonds New York in Columbus Circle. I help people buy, sell and rent real estate. The difference between a condo and an apartment. Well an apartment and a condo are exactly the same thing the difference is that you own a condo and you rent an apartment. Now whether or not you are in a position to buy a condo or you should stay renting is a completely different thing. But one of the questions you want to ask yourself is how long do you see yourself staying where you currently live. If I'm a great real estate agent and I confidently believe that if someone were to buy an apartment for me and decide three months later they wanted to sell, I could see it in a week, in a month, like I could get rid of that thing really fast but the bottom line is for your piece of mind, do you want to go through that? If you're going to be in New York or San Francisco or anywhere else in the country for just a year, two years, three years, it probably makes sense for a short period of time just to rent. However, if you're going to be there for a long period of time, three, four, five years or more then of course it would make more financial sense to buy a condo because then you're going to get a much nicer apartment, every dollar that is being spent every month is going to build equity in yourself. It's going to fund your dream not some landlord's dream, it's going to build equity in your family and again if you were to sell that apartment you could realize anywhere from a 5, 10, 15 to 20% return in your down payment. So if you had substantial reserves available for a down payment and it was sitting in a bank account getting 1/2% interest, 1% you know what's the point of it doing that when you could put your money to work and money has to either be moving, it can't just stay still because it dies. So in order for your money to continue to grow you've got to get it moving somewhere so whether it's the stock market or real estate, I really believe that buying would be the better investment of your funds if it was available.