What is a condo? A form of ownership rather than a building shape: you own your unit plus an undivided share of the common elements, and a recorded declaration decides where the line between them falls.
A condominium is a form of ownership. Nevada defines it at NRS 116.027 as a common-interest community in which portions of the real estate are designated for separate ownership and the remainder for common ownership by the owners of those separate portions, and it says a community is not a condominium unless the undivided interests in the common elements are vested in the units' owners. The common-interest community it sits inside is NRS 116.021: 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 the common elements. The plain version is that you own the space inside your walls plus an undivided share of everything else, and the recorded declaration draws that boundary, not common sense.
Because it is a form of ownership, the word says nothing about what the building looks like. A row of attached two-story homes that reads as townhouses can be titled as condominiums. A twenty-story tower can be apartments that nobody owns a unit in. A detached single-story house on a shared drive can be a condominium unit if the recorded map says so. What settles it is the document, not the roofline. A deed conveying a unit number on a condominium plat together with an undivided interest in the common elements is a condominium; a deed conveying a lot and block on a subdivision map is not, whatever the walls are doing. Where the boundary falls inside the unit, whether it stops at unfinished drywall or takes in the original finishes, is a declaration question too, and it varies from project to project.
What follows in practice is a second set of costs and a second decision-maker. There are monthly assessments set by a board off an annual budget. There is a master insurance policy that covers the structure and stops somewhere inside the unit, with the owner's own policy picking up from there. There is a reserve study saying whether the roof and the elevators are funded, and a special assessment when they are not. And a lender underwrites the building as well as the borrower, which is the project review behind the phrase warrantable condo. Nevada also carries an older condominium act, chapter 117, whose NRS 117.010 describes the same estate as an undivided interest in common in portions of a parcel together with a separate interest in space in a building; some older valley projects were created under it.
A worked example
A 900 square foot two-bedroom lists at $265,000 with dues of $340 a month. The deed conveys unit 214 together with a 1/96th undivided interest in the common elements. The dues cover the roof, the exterior, the water and the association's master policy; the owner insures the interior separately, in public figures a few hundred dollars a year. Two years in, the reserve study comes up $290,000 short on the roof and the board levies the gap across 96 units at roughly $3,020 each, offered as a lump sum or spread over a year. The mortgage payment never moved and the cost of owning the place did.
Buying a condo in Las Vegas: what you own and what you do not
Questions people ask
Do you own the land under a condo?
Not on your own. The land is normally a common element held undivided by all the unit owners together, and the deed conveys a share of it rather than a lot. A few projects sit on leased land instead, which the declaration and the preliminary title report will say plainly.
Is a condo the same as an apartment?
No, and the building can be identical. Condominium is a form of ownership, so each unit is owned separately. Apartment is a form of occupancy, so one owner rents the units out. The same tower could be either without a brick changing.