As I am looking to a condo to purchase, I can't help but be discouraged by the high monthly maintenance fees.
Maintenance fees vary widely from one condominium to another depending on a variety of factors.
In the broadest sense the maintenance fees are determined by taking the total operating budget of the condominium, adding in a factor to fund any reserves that the Association's directors and Owners believe they should be funding and dividing that amount by the ownership interest in the common elements of each unit. That annual sum is then usually collected in monthly payments although some projects bill in quarterly or annual payments to minimize accounting effort. If all buildings costs of operation were identical, you could assume that any condo of roughly the same square footage would have roughly the same maintenance figure. This is clearly untrue for several reasons. First and most importantly is the overall style of the operation.