Recently I was shopping for a new home with a client and they were in search of a townhouse or condo. They didn't want to maintenance and yard responsibility as well they wanted to turn it into an investment property at some time. As we began to search through the homes one thing came into play was the HOA dues. Some varied from as much as $100 per month to $450 per month. A lot of that came from the age of the properties or the amenities. The older properties required much more upkeep to maintain them, hence the higher HOA dues. We found it interesting that some of the newer homes had the lower dues but were higher in purchase price. If you take $100 a month more on a typical loan it should effectively cost $25,000 extra. So what we looked at was comparing both the HOA dues with the price to come up with the home that may best fit all of their needs.