You might be buying “air,” but it comes with a property title and really is an asset. That gives condo owners leverage and flexibility that they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Zero leverage if the building has to be leveled. Your title becomes a title to unimproved air, and if a new building goes up in that air, you dont own it.
Yeah, I get that. But I just don’t see it as “owning real estate”. Even when I lived in the Seattle area and had a dumpy 3 bedroom rambler on 8,000 sq ft, it was MY 8,000 sq ft lot. I could pretty much do what I wanted on it, outside the laws governing everyone in the area.
BTW, those laws are one of the reasons I left the area for rural Kentucky. Much more freedom with your property here. In fact, I LEGALLY built a 30x60 shop/mancave with no building permit. It’s heated with a wood stove, BTW.
I consider living in a condo, or in a neighborhood governed by an HOA to be too much like living in the old USSR. And since, unlike the citizens of that place, I have the right to not do it or move away...I did.