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.
Related Posts
January 14, 2026: The Fed Has Missed Its Inflation Target on Ten Different Measures
The Atlanta Fed tracks various inflation targets. Let’s have a look.
March 30, 2026: Powell Warns the Markets and Trump that His Patience with Inflation Has Limits
Powell’s speech was to Harvard students but read between the lines.
April 9, 2026: Inflation Has Been Above the Fed’s Target for 5 Straight Years
The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation has been above 2 percent since March of 2021.
My mind bogles at the cpi. I just looked at coffee pods on Amazon. A year ago, the coffee was $21/box, my last purchase was $28/box, the current price is $41/box.
Special assessments and underfunded reserves will get worse as there is support for this new bill in CA capping increases to CPI.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB1007
We wrapped up advocacy days last week and there was huge support for this bill by the legislature, not realizing HOA’s are underfunded already.
As I read through the comments they reflect the typical linear yet static thoughts. What everyone needs to be thinking about NOW is not the current outrage nor the 5 years historical rise in costs, what you SHOULD be thinking about now is what will the next 5 and 10 years bring.
Let me help you out. If the median condo fee is $420 in 2025 then by 2030 at 4.3% growth means it’ll be $520 in 5 years and $640 in ten years assuming inflation and labor costs don’t go out of control.
Now apply that same math to utilities, fuel, food, maintenance, insurance and other core expenses and tell me which is the year you’ll go broke or tell me how you are going to be banking profits to pay for it all. Because the ONLY other options are death or a good exit strategy where you can live like a king instead of a broke peasant.
“You can live like a king” Well, lots of Americans had the same idea as you of retiring in a foreign country and prices have been pushed up in those previously affordable places. Costa Rica is expensive now and they jacked up the health insurance rates for foreign pensioners.
Also, you would be well-advised to hire a personal bodyguard if you are rich in a third world country. I knew someone who moved here from middle-class Brazil and she was shocked how “safe” it was in the U.S. You generally don’t have to worry about being kidnapped in the U.S. for a ransom, even if you’re rich.
And the older you get the more vulnerable you look. In your late 40s like MPO45v2 you don’t look like near the easy target you will look like when you are in your late 60s or older.
“You generally don’t have to worry about being kidnapped in the U.S.”
Lol. No, you just need to worry about a mass shooting at your local school, church, restaurant, post office, etc. And then if you do get shot or don’t, you have to worry about going bankrupt for visiting a hospital and getting a $50,000 bill for aspirin.
You guys are too funny, you focus on low probability events and ignore the common and likely ones.
If moving ain’t for you then don’t do it, just learn to live in misery.
There are lies, damn lies, and there is the FED
Did I read that right that the median HOA fee for single-family homeowners (the majority of US owners) was $63. What if that goes up 50%? Homeowners will be out an extra $32 next year.
OMG, what ever will they do? And how much will that impact the price level (inflation) for their total spending for this coming year? Answer: ~0%
Shame on the BLS for not measuring HOA fees perfectly. I hope Congress decides to hire thousands more economists to help get HOA and so total inflation right
I think you read it wrong, that appears to be the monthly amount in the context of the condo fees mentioned above it, monthly.
“Abolish the FED”. “Mish for president 2028”
“Balance America’s Budget Again – BABA”
For me. BABA is genius!!!
With the housing shortage in all the northeastern states, you either pay up or you live in a cardboard box. There are plenty of other people in line willing and able to pay the currently stratospheric housing costs and bid them even higher.
Housing (rent & house prices) has gone up 10% or more the last 3 years in Connecticut. Prices are up 80 percent since 2019. Rent that would have been $1200 in 2019 is now $2000-$2200. There are multiple people competing for every rental listing that comes up.
I’m relocating this summer to an area of of the country that doesn’t have a rental or housing shortage (I won’t say where) but the house prices have still gone up 7% in the last year. But houses (and rents) are 40% less than where I currently live.
The place I really wanted to retire in, Knoxville Tennessee, got ‘discovered’ during the scamdemic and then median house prices went from $150K to over $300K along with rents that have gone up just as much.
Thanks for sharing that article. RemindS me of things you used to write years ago.
Speaking from experience – many HOAs/condos are well behind the curve in raising their dues as ownership pushes back hard and most board members are unable/willing to effectively communicate the need for the hike. Simply saying ‘prices are up’ is not good enough, you need to show where the increases are, what you are doing to mitigate the increase (if possible) and how you are planning for the next X years.
We were told we will own nothing and be happy. This is how it comes about. So what are we going to do about it?
One part of that nothing/happy will happen, the other part will not, hahaha.
Not a f**king thing, so deal with it. lolz
Even home owners need to pay property taxes to keep their house. You don’t really own anything.
I seldom use the word always, but government inflation numbers are always clumsy lies.
Iranian Gunboats Open Fire On Tanker As Hormuz Closure Sparks Maritime Chaos
BWAHAHAHAHHAHA
Strait CLOSED FOR BUSINESS!!!
TRUMP sucks, told you so.
HOAs are a scam. They exist so property mgmt, insurance, and landscaping companies can extract rents for doing nothing. Finding an insurance company that will write a policy for an HOA is hard to begin with, but then if you have those runoff ponds the EPA requires, even harder. Property management companies will charge you $1200 a month (10 years ago) to make sure the lawn gets mowed and the electric, insurance, and lawn mowing bills get paid. While the lawnmowers charge you extra for stuff that is already covered in your contract. And while the niece of the owner of the property mgmt company will charge you $50 a month for managing your non-functional website that you don’t need anyway. And HOAs provide a way for busy bodies who need to control other people but aren’t pretty enough or sociopathic/psychopathic enough for politics to persecute their neighbors when the grass is 1/2 inch too tall or for failing to submit an application to put a fence up. Someday HOAs will be seen as a liability and it will be harder to sell a house in an HOA than one that isn’t.
So basically the purple-haired types in any and all corporate HR departments
Or Old Men who are triggered by something as petty as someone’s hair color 🤌
So true.
I rented a condo for a few years and went to a few meetings for the free food even though I wasn’t an owner. As HOA rose they started looking into where the money went and found all kinds of scams where property manager was hiring brother in law lawyer as property lawyer for a few K a year and he did nothing. There was tens of thousands misallocated like that.
Having lived in condos, and had a rental condo I owned as well (bad idea back then I learned), this is typical BAU from what I gathered from roughly a decade dealing with it all. While the fee covers maintenance for example, it doesn’t (didn’t) go up with inflation, or even as a theory to keep up with cost through the years. The owners got together and decided if so and how much. This applies to all expenses involved, or did back then, so the owners were all behind from the start, and never caught up.
We had liens from the developer/builder to get more money, but us owners realized we were being played. They eventually disappeared and left the owners with the problem. I had to pay back pay for roughly 5 years before I could sell!! Much of these cost sky rocketed as the end of the project came closer, they wanted lump sum payments for overriding cost etc. it was a nightmare!
A personally would never own one again for any reason. It’s dependent on all owners always working and staying ahead, so they have the money to pay these fees. Once one or two say I can’t pay, others chime in me neither, or I will, when they do etc. can’t get blood from a stone was quickly learned to be a true statement.
Ironically I was silly enough to lead a fee for common area Landscaping (morphed into a fee) in the new housing development we touched down on. After 5 years, and a lot of BS I resigned, and after being begged to come back, I could see where it was going, and we sold not long after that. I was called to run it after I had left, that’s how screwed up it got. Never Ever Again for me!!! It took over a decade to finish that development, after we left (one of the first in).
So all of those inflated expenses are going into someone’s pocket. Any ideas on who that might be?
To the subject of measures of “inflation”, here’s a half-baked idea:
Measure total spending. Including taxes?
Quick search of the blog shows there hasn’t been a Mish post on UBI in awhile…probably because the concept is so f&&king stupid on it’s face that it’s hard to come up with something worth saying.
Elon Musk’s proposal of ‘universal high income’ to combat AI job losses baffles economists: ‘So wrong on this’
https://nypost.com/2026/04/17/business/elon-musks-proposal-of-universal-high-income-to-combat-ai-job-losses-baffles-economists/
But…but….I don’t have to cut the grass or shovel the driveway…Meh
Prop insurance in Colorado is off the hook
Colorado home insurance premiums are soaring faster than anywhere else
When Peter McClure and his family purchased their home in Severance in 2021, insuring the property cost $1,584 a year.
Initially, he viewed Colorado’s property taxes and insurance costs as a bargain compared to California, the state he left behind. That didn’t last long. After years of repeated hikes, McClure’s most recent quote from Nationwide Insurance was $11,300, seven times more than what he was charged when he first moved in.
https://www.denverpost.com/2026/04/02/colorado-home-insurance-costs/
That 29% figure resolves to 4.3% increase each year. Not very much different from an honest measure of cost of living increase in the period 2019-2025.
Was thinking the same thing.
Even the guy in the original article who’s price doubled to 1500 since 2015 has seen his rise 6.5% a year in 11 years. It’s not that insane.
Except the additional point of Mish’s article was that those increases and the others around housing mentioned aren’t counted in either of the official measures of inflation (ab)used by economists and the Fed. Additionally the lead portion of the condo fees said they more than doubled since 2015 which is around 6.5% annually, a far cry from the official numbers and obviously more than the Fed target…if the Fed included the damn fees in their number.
All the disadvantages of renting and owning wrapped into one!