We are currently shopping for a home. Most of the housing stock in the area we are looking in are single family homes, in the form of attached rowhouses. There are also a few coop buildings. For the space we want, we would pay $275-300,000 for a rowhouse, or 155-170,000 for a coop. The coops all have significant maintenance fees, $800-1,000/month. Fees include property tax, exterior maintenance, insurance, and most utilities (sometimes electricity is separately metered).
In either case, we'd put 20% down and get a 15 year mortgage. Mortgage rates will be slightly higher for the coop, because we are restricted to a handful of specialty lenders - probably 3.625% instead of 3.25%.
Can someone help me run the numbers on this comparison? If it helps, our strongest contenders are a 300k single family home and a coop that is asking 160,000 with fees of $1025/month. Property tax on a 300k home is about 6k/year. I do not know how much utilities would be, since I've never lived in one of these kinds of houses before (we are moving from a different state), but I'll estimate that the difference is about $100/month.
ETA: There are other lifestyle considerations, obviously, but I think I have a handle on those. I need help with the math part of it.