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HOA fee calculator: is your condo's HOA fee normal?

Enter your city, size and monthly dues. This tells you where that fee actually sits against 3,271 Bay Area condo buildings — normal, high, or suspiciously low — using the dues recorded on their sales, not a national average.

3,271 buildings · 8 cities · updated Oct 11, 2026

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What a normal HOA fee looks like, by city

A normal HOA fee for a Bay Area condo is about $514 a month, with most buildings between $365 and $715. What counts as normal depends heavily on the city and the building, so enter yours above for the real comparison.

CityBuildingsMedian HOATypical rangeRising
San Francisco1083$681/mo$450–$1,003+5.4%/yr
Fremont554$473/mo$361–$572+4.4%/yr
Oakland541$534/mo$375–$705+6.3%/yr
Hayward343$390/mo$330–$521+5.6%/yr
Alameda270$475/mo$365–$673+6.9%/yr
Berkeley194$400/mo$265–$564+6%/yr
San Leandro162$450/mo$373–$540+5.3%/yr
Emeryville124$575/mo$460–$696+7.2%/yr

A low fee is not automatically a win

The single most useful thing this calculator does is flag a fee that is too low. Dues well under comparable buildings usually mean the board is deferring maintenance or underfunding the reserve fund. The roof still fails on schedule; the cost simply arrives as a special assessment instead of a monthly line item, and it lands on whoever owns the unit that year. If your fee comes back in the bottom 10%, ask for the reserve study before you treat it as a bargain.

🧮Check your actual buildingUpload the docs for a free reserve and special-assessment read.📘How to read a reserve studyThe 70/30 percent-funded benchmark, in plain English.🏠What does that fee do to the payment?Full monthly cost with this fee, tax, insurance and the mortgage.🏢HOA Fee ReportWhich Bay Area buildings are raising dues fastest.

Where these numbers come from

Every recorded condo sale carries the unit's HOA fee and the date it sold. Stealpad reads years of those sales and rebuilds a dated fee history for each building, which is why this can compare your fee against real buildings rather than a national average. Only dues recorded within the last 3 years count, so the comparison reflects what buildings charge now. A city is only offered once we have 40 buildings for it, and a size only at 20 — below that the honest answer is that we cannot say, so the option is not shown. Fees are aggregated; no unit, owner or sale is identified.

📌 Cite this data (free — a link is all we ask)

A normal Bay Area condo HOA fee is $514/mo (typical range $365–$715), across 3,271 buildings, Stealpad (Oct 11, 2026).

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Source: <a href="https://stealpad.com/tools/hoa-fee-calculator/">Stealpad</a> — A normal Bay Area condo HOA fee is $514/mo (typical range $365–$715), across 3,271 buildings. Oct 11, 2026.

Frequently asked

What is a normal HOA fee for a condo in the Bay Area?
The median is about $514 a month, and most buildings fall between $365 and $715. That is measured across 3,271 condo buildings in 8 cities, using the dues actually recorded on their sales. City matters a lot: San Francisco runs about $681, Fremont runs about $473, Oakland runs about $534.
Is a high HOA fee bad?
Not on its own. A higher fee often buys a well-funded reserve, which is exactly what prevents a surprise special assessment later. The combination that should worry you is a fee that is high AND rising fast AND sitting on a thin reserve. The fee alone cannot tell you that — the building's reserve study can.
Is a low HOA fee good?
Often the opposite. Dues that sit well below comparable buildings are the classic signature of a board deferring maintenance or underfunding the reserve. The repair still happens; it just arrives as a special assessment instead of a monthly fee. If your fee lands in the bottom 10% here, treat it as a question rather than a discount.
How is this HOA fee calculator built?
Every recorded condo sale carries the unit's HOA fee and the date it sold. Stealpad reconstructs a dated fee history for each building from years of those sales, which is how we can compare your fee against 3,271 real buildings instead of a national average. Only buildings with dues recorded in the last 3 years are used, and a city or size is only offered when there are enough buildings to answer honestly.
Why does my building's fee differ so much from a similar condo nearby?
HOA dues track the building's cost structure far more than the unit's size or address: age, elevators, insurance, amenities, staffing and how well the reserve is funded. Two condos on the same block can differ by hundreds a month for reasons that never appear on the listing. That is also why a bigger unit is not reliably a bigger fee — a 3-bedroom in a walk-up can easily cost less per month than a studio in a tower.
How fast are Bay Area HOA fees rising?
Across buildings with a confident multi-year history, dues are climbing a median 6% a year. The HOA Fee Report breaks that down by city and names the buildings rising fastest.