Personally I think there are really great deals to be had in the "ugly" 70s buildings in the Beltline. Instead of paying 450-500k for a 2 bedroom, you can get one for under 300k that's going to be considerably bigger than in a new one. When we bought ours, the whole unit was renovated and looked better than a lot of new ones I had been in. I think the finishing on a lot of newer condos are quite poor to be honest.
One thing that can alleviate the assessment fear is to have someone look over the books before you close. We had someone look over the condo books to see if there were any issues down the line, and were able to negotiate another 10k off the price after the guy said that it looks like the roof would soon need repairs. Sure enough, we were notified of a 5k assessment soon after for that reason.
Newer buildings always have that laughably low condo fee as well...you just know that will be jacked up in a year or two to build up that reserve.
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