Median Monthly Condo Fee Was $420 in 2025, up 29% from 2019

Not a penny of that is in the CPI or PCE. Nor are property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, or special assessments.

Surging HOA Fees Push Homeowners to the Brink

The Wall Street Journal reports Surging HOA Fees Are Pushing Homeowners to the Brink.

Donald DeFesi’s monthly fees for his condominium association in Walnut Creek, Calif., have more than doubled since 2015 to $1,500. He now pays more each month for his association fees, condo insurance and property taxes than he does for the principal and interest on his mortgage.

The median monthly condo fee was $420 in 2025, up 29% from 2019, according to a Realtor.com analysis of for-sale listings. For single-family homeowners, median HOA fees rose 26% from 2019 to $63 last year. 

HOA and condo fees aren’t the biggest expense in many household budgets, but they are rising at the same time as near-record home prices and elevated mortgage rates have worsened home-buying affordability. Property-tax bills, home-insurance premiums and utility costs have also climbed in many parts of the country.

About 21.6 million households, one-fourth of owner households in the U.S., paid HOA or condo fees in 2024, according to a Census Bureau analysis from September.

HOA and condo fees make up the biggest proportion of home buyers’ mortgage payments in Florida markets, according to Realtor.com, which is operated by News Corp, parent of The Wall Street Journal.

HOA Numbers Are Seriously Understated

The median monthly fees shown (+26% for single-family HOAs and +29% for condos since 2019) do not include special assessments.

These one-time charges for major repairs, structural work, or insurance shortfalls have become far more common and costly in recent years, adding thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars per owner on top of regular dues.

This makes the real increase in total HOA-related costs significantly higher than the regular fee numbers alone suggest.

• Regular monthly fees cover ongoing operations (maintenance, landscaping, utilities, management, and part of insurance).
• Special assessments are one-time (or spread-out) charges for major, unexpected, or large-scale expenses that reserves can’t cover — things like roof replacements, structural repairs, parking lot resurfacing, elevator upgrades, or surging master insurance premiums for the entire building/community.
• Special assessments have become much more frequent and expensive since ~2019–2020 due to:
  • Years of underfunded reserves in many associations.
  • Sharp rises in repair/rebuild costs (labor, materials, inflation).
  • Soaring insurance costs passed through to associations (especially for condos and coastal properties).
  • New safety laws (e.g., in Florida and California) requiring costly inspections and fixes on aging buildings.
• Amounts can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands per unit (some Florida and California condo cases have seen $40,000–$100,000+ per owner).

In short: The published median monthly HOA fee increases understate the true cost of ownership in many HOA/condo communities, especially Florida and hurricane zones.

Homeowners Insurance

Homeowner’s Insurance Notes

• 2014 through 2022 numbers are official NAIC/III national averages for the standard HO-3 homeowners policy. These are the most recent standardized national figures available from that source.
• Numbers from 2023 onward represent modern quote-based averages standardized to ~$300,000–$350,000 in dwelling coverage (the amount needed to rebuild the home).
• Rising costs of homes, repair/rebuild costs (labor and materials), and natural disasters (fire, flood, hurricane, hail, etc.) account for much of the huge jumps. Higher home values and replacement costs alone explain a significant portion of the apparent increase starting in 2023.

Five Housing Costs Not In the CPI

• The Price of the Home Itself
• Homeowner’s Insurance
• Property Taxes
• HOAs
• Special Assessments

Ridiculous Measures of Inflation

Every month we have CPI and PCE reports, and they are never realistic because of what’s excluded.

Economists ignore all five things above because they consider them a capital expense, not a consumer expense.

So what? The bill has to be paid. And people are struggling to pay those bills.

Inflation matters, not just consumer inflation.

The Fed makes all of this worse by ignoring these bubbles.

More accurately, the Fed sponsors the bubbles precisely because it does not know how to measure inflation.

Even with these poor measures the Fed has done a miserable job.

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