How to read a compound before you buy in it

The single most expensive mistake we see in the October corridor is buying the unit instead of the compound. The unit is easy to assess — you can walk it. The compound is where the money is actually made or lost, and assessing it takes a different set of questions.

First: is the clubhouse open, today, with people in it? Not built. Not finished. Open and used. A closed clubhouse in a delivered phase is the clearest signal available that the operating budget does not work, and operating budgets do not fix themselves.

Second: look at the landscaping in the oldest delivered phase, not the newest. Sales will walk you through phase one, which is planted for photographs. Phase one is four years old somewhere else in the same compound — go and look at that instead. Whatever it looks like today is what your phase looks like in four years.

Third: count the cars in the earliest phase on a weekday evening. Occupancy is the truth serum. A delivered phase at thirty percent occupancy after three years has a problem that no amenity will solve, and it will be your problem when you try to sell.

Fourth: ask what the maintenance fee was three years ago and what it is now. The trajectory matters more than the number. Fees that have tripled tell you the original figure was a sales device, and the developer has now handed you the real cost.

Fifth: find the service road. Every compound has one, and every brochure crops it out. Know whether your unit backs onto it before you sign, not after you move in.

Sixth, and most reliably: talk to a resident. Not the sales office, not the security guard — someone who lives there and has no interest in your decision. Five minutes at the gate will tell you more than the entire sales presentation, and nobody ever does it.