How much are HOA fees on average?
Reviewed by the OurHOA team · Updated July 2026
What the national numbers actually say, why the average is a poor benchmark, and how to judge whether your own dues are reasonable.
The number everyone quotes
The Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey found that 21.6 million of the country's 86.6 million owner households pay a condo or HOA fee, and the median among them was $135 a month. Realtor.com's analysis of for-sale listings landed on the same $135 figure for 2025. That is the number you will see repeated in every article on the subject, and on its own it tells you almost nothing about what you should be paying.
Why the median hides the whole story
Look at how the same Census data spreads out and the average stops being useful. Roughly a quarter of fee-paying households pay less than $50 a month. Close to 3 million pay $500 or more. A median sitting between a $40 lot-maintenance fee in a Texas subdivision and a $900 fee in a Chicago high-rise does not describe either community, and neither one is doing anything wrong. Fees are not a market price set by competition. They are arithmetic: your association's total costs divided across the homes that share them.
What the low end and the high end actually buy
Say your community has 60 single-family homes, an entry monument, a retention pond, and a strip of grass along the main road. Forty dollars a month covers mowing, the pond permit, a small liability policy, and a modest reserve contribution, and that is a fully functional HOA doing its entire job. Now picture a mid-rise condo where the association owns the roof, the siding, the elevators, the boiler, the hallways, and carries the master insurance policy, and where dues include water and trash. Six hundred a month there is not a luxury surcharge, it is most of the building's operating cost plus the bills you would otherwise be paying separately. Comparing those two fees is like comparing a car payment to a bus pass.
Condos and single-family communities are barely the same product
Realtor.com's 2025 listing data shows 84.8 percent of condo and townhome listings carry monthly dues, against 33.4 percent of single-family listings. The gap in what those dues cover is even wider. In most single-family HOAs you insure and maintain your own structure, and the association handles shared land and amenities. In most condos the association is responsible for the building itself, which pulls roof replacement, exterior maintenance, and a large master insurance premium into the monthly fee. If you are shopping across both types, compare total monthly housing cost rather than the dues line, because a low condo fee sometimes just means the association is not funding the roof.
Geography does a lot of the work
Where you live moves the number more than almost anything else. The Census data shows the highest share of fee-paying homeowners in Nevada, Arizona, and Florida, each somewhere in the range of 44 to 51 percent of owners. Realtor.com found Nevada leads on listings carrying dues at 68.3 percent, while South Dakota sits at 12.3 percent. The reasons are practical: newer master-planned development in the Sun Belt, private streets the city never agreed to maintain, coastal wind and flood insurance that has repriced dramatically, and in northern states a snow removal contract that has to be funded whether it snows or not. A fee that looks outrageous in Ohio can be entirely ordinary in South Florida.
Why the number keeps climbing
The listing median moved from $108 in 2019 to $125 in 2024 to $135 in 2025, and that trajectory is not mysterious. Property and casualty insurance is the loudest driver by a wide margin, particularly for condo associations in wind and wildfire states, where boards have watched premiums double across a few renewal cycles. Labor, landscaping, and building materials all cost more than they did. And a large share of associations are nowhere near where their own reserve studies say their savings should be, which eventually forces either a catch-up increase or a special assessment. Dues that have not moved in six years are usually not a sign of a well-run community. They are a sign of a bill that has not been sent yet.
How to tell if your own fee is reasonable
Stop comparing yourself to the national median and start comparing yourself to your own budget. Four questions get you most of the way there: what share of the annual budget goes to reserve contributions rather than day-to-day operating costs, what percent funded does the most recent reserve study say you are, what is the delinquency rate among owners, and how long has it been since the last increase. A community collecting $600 a month with a fully funded roof reserve is in better shape than one collecting $200 with nothing set aside and a roof at year 22 of a 25 year life. The answers should be sitting in the budget, the reserve study, and the treasurer's report, and any owner is entitled to ask for them. Keeping those documents somewhere owners can actually find them, instead of in a former treasurer's inbox, is a large part of what OurHOA does. See also our guides on what HOA dues cover, how much an HOA should have in reserves, and how to read HOA financials.
OurHOA is the friendly, affordable way self-managed communities keep dues, records, and reminders in one place. See how it works.
These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.