A condominium is a form of ownership rather than a kind of building: you hold deeded title to the space inside your unit plus an undivided share of the common elements around it, and where that boundary falls is set by a recorded declaration rather than by common sense.
Almost every description of a condo starts with the building, which is the wrong end of it. A condominium is created by a document. Somebody records a declaration against a parcel of land, the declaration divides the parcel into units owned separately and common elements owned by all of those unit owners together, and from that moment the parcel is a condominium. What stands on it may be a tower, a row of attached homes or a single detached house, and none of that is what made it one. So the question worth answering is what the owner of one holds alone, what they hold with everybody else, and what the shared half obliges them to do and pay.
The definition, in law and then in plain words
Under NRS 116.027 a condominium is a common-interest community in which portions of the real estate are designated for separate ownership and the remainder for common ownership solely by the owners of those portions. The statute then adds the test that does the real work: it is not a condominium unless the undivided interests in the common elements are vested in the units' owners. That clause separates a condominium from every other way of sharing a building. The shared parts are not owned by the association, a landlord or a corporation. They belong to the unit owners in fractional shares that cannot be sold away from the units.
A common-interest community is itself defined at NRS 116.021 as real estate described in a declaration where owning a unit obliges the owner to pay a share of the taxes, insurance, maintenance or services for property other than that unit. That obligation, not the walls, is what people are buying into.
The plain version: you own the space inside your walls plus a slice of everything else, and the declaration draws the line between them. On most declarations the line is the unfinished surface of the walls, floor and ceiling, which is why people say a condo owner owns from the drywall in. That is a drafting choice rather than a law of nature, and declarations put windows, balconies and pipes on different sides of it.
Nevada defines the word twice. Chapter 116, the Uniform Common-Interest Ownership Act, is the modern statute and governs almost everything a buyer meets. An older act describes the same estate at NRS 117.010: an undivided interest in common in portions of a parcel, together with a separate interest in space in a building. An old declaration may cite chapter 117, and that does not make the unit work differently.
It is a form of ownership, not a building shape
This confuses people in both directions. A building that looks exactly like a row of townhouses, each with its own front door and patch of yard, can be titled as condominiums, because the declaration makes the yard a limited common element and the unit boundary the interior surface. Detached houses are sometimes platted as condominiums too, which lets a project share a private street or a pool without dividing the land into lots.
It runs the other way as well. A twenty-story building full of apartments is not a condominium if one owner holds it all and rents the units out, and a gated community of detached houses is usually a planned community, because each owner holds their own lot in fee. The deed and the recorded declaration settle it, not the architecture.
What comes attached to the deed
Membership in the association is automatic and inseparable, beginning when the deed records and ending when you sell. The members elect a board, the board adopts a budget, and the budget divided by the ownership shares is the monthly assessment, usually called dues. A cost the budget did not anticipate, a roof the reserves cannot cover, comes back as a special assessment on the same shares. Neither is optional: an unpaid assessment is secured by a lien against the unit.
Insurance arrives in two pieces: the association's master policy on the structure and common elements, and the owner's policy on the unit, normally an HO-6, whose size depends on whether the master policy is bare walls or all-in. The reserve study is the document that says whether the dues are real, listing the components the association must eventually replace, what each will cost and when, and how much of that the fund covers.
The five days that exist for buyers
Nevada gives a condo buyer a look at all of this before it is too late. Under NRS 116.4109 the seller must furnish a resale package at the seller's expense: the declaration, bylaws and rules, the information statement, the monthly assessment and any unpaid obligation on the unit, the current budget and financials including the reserve summary, unsatisfied judgments and pending legal actions, the transfer fees, and proof of insurance.
The purchaser may cancel by written notice until midnight of the fifth calendar day after receiving it. Calendar days, not business days. That window is the whole point of the document, and the only stage of the purchase where the association's finances can be read and acted on at no cost.
Questions people ask
Do you own the land under a condo?
Collectively, yes. The land is a common element, owned by all the unit owners in undivided fractional shares rather than by the association. You cannot point at a piece of it and call it yours, and you cannot sell your share separately from the unit.
Is a condo the same as an apartment?
No. Apartment describes how a unit is occupied, condominium describes how it is owned. A condo unit has its own deed and its own owner; an apartment in a conventional building is one of many units under a single owner, and every resident there is a tenant.
What is the difference between a condominium and a cooperative?
In a condominium you own real estate: a deed to the unit and a share of the common elements. In a cooperative, defined in Nevada at NRS 116.031, the association owns the real estate and each member holds a right to exclusive possession of a unit. Co-ops finance differently and are rare in Nevada.