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Condominium issues

Fourth p: Property Management. I've had so many problems with property management and their poor attitudes towards tenants/owners. I get the feeling they want to be left alone sitting in their cushy offices not having to worry about our problems.
 
Any person or corporation can buy all the units in a condo corporation that they desire. If they can get ownership of enough units, they can apply to the courts to terminate the corporation. When that happens, everyone gets their %age of the total sale price, whether low or high.

This is happening in Florida and may start happening here in Ontario. See:
http://www.condomadness.info/Florida-seige.html

That is a danger to the older condos that did not maintain the property (low fees) and the city has a number of expensive work orders. The unit values crash, CHMC will not insure the mortgages and the owners cannot afford the special assessments needed to fix the property. A developer then moves in to grab the land and rebuild, newer, higher towers.
 
Condo Madness said:
Any person or corporation can buy all the units in a condo corporation that they desire. If they can get ownership of enough units, they can apply to the courts to terminate the corporation. When that happens, everyone gets their %age of the total sale price, whether low or high.

This is happening in Florida and may start happening here in Ontario. See:
http://www.condomadness.info/Florida-seige.html

That is a danger to the older condos that did not maintain the property (low fees) and the city has a number of expensive work orders. The unit values crash, CHMC will not insure the mortgages and the owners cannot afford the special assessments needed to fix the property. A developer then moves in to grab the land and rebuild, newer, higher towers.
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The de-registering of a condo in Ontario is covered by the Condominium Act and it requires a vote of 80% of the owners in favour.

Termination with consent

122. (1) A corporation shall register a notice terminating the government of the property by this Act if,

(a) the owners of at least 80 per cent of the units, at the date of the vote, vote in favour of termination; and

(b) at least 80 per cent of those persons who, at the date of the vote, have registered claims against the property, that were created after the registration of the declaration and description that made this Act applicable to the property, consent in writing to the termination. 1998, c. 19, s. 122 (1).
 
DSC said:
The de-registering of a condo in Ontario is covered by the Condominium Act and it requires a vote of 80% of the owners in favour.

Termination with consent
Click to expand...

You may not know that a timeshare condo in cottage country was terminated by a court order even though 80% of the owners did not agree to terminate.

The courts can order a condo to be terminated. There was a recent seminar held for Ontario lawyers to discuss how to use the courts to terminate troubled condo corporations.

Not a worry yet, but perhaps soon if the real estate market collapses.
 
asiancolossus said:
Fourth p: Property Management. I've had so many problems with property management and their poor attitudes towards tenants/owners. I get the feeling they want to be left alone sitting in their cushy offices not having to worry about our problems.
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Too many condos going up with not enough experienced, trained property managers to choose from, IMO.

That said, I help out our property manager a lot and I see the rudest, most entitled people on earth making the most ridiculous and off-base demands.

I am not sure what you mean by "problems," but if you could spend some time in your property manager's office, you might be surprised by what goes on in there.
 
Ex-Montreal Girl said:
Too many condos going up with not enough experienced, trained property managers to choose from, IMO.

That said, I help out our property manager a lot and I see the rudest, most entitled people on earth making the most ridiculous and off-base demands.

I am not sure what you mean by "problems," but if you could spend some time in your property manager's office, you might be surprised by what goes on in there.
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Yes, as a Board member in my building I too see (a few) owners and tenants who simply do not understand that living in a condo is NOT the same as living in a detached house and fail to realise that the Board and the property manager have to run the building for everyone AND follow the Condo Act too.
 
DSC said:
Yes, as a Board member in my building I too see (a few) owners and tenants who simply do not understand that living in a condo is NOT the same as living in a detached house and fail to realise that the Board and the property manager have to run the building for everyone AND follow the Condo Act too.
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It's the ones who believe they are living in a hotel that make me crazy.
 
Trust me, I know there are unreasonable people who feel they can demand anything of the property management. I do feel for what they have to deal with. I can only speak to my own personal experiences of the people they hire, leaving ceiling dust all over my furniture when fixing my ceiling and not feeling they did anything wrong, sending security in to check on a warranty item and leaving my door unlocked and yet not completely understanding what kind of security risk this is to my property...the list goes on. To me its more about the lackadaisical (?sp) attitude that I feel they show, maybe because they are so jaded by complaints that I find most irritating.
 
I have recently been trying to register our Condo Corporation with the new Condominium Authority of Ontario. (All Condos are supposed to register by 31 December). Firstly, they did not send (or we did not receive) the "Code" you need to register but an email got that fairly easily - even if they seem unable to understand that MTCC means Metropolitan Toronto Condominium Corporation! . Then the trouble started. Their registration site kept kicking me off (with no explanation); I emailed them.
"Oh, you were trying to register using an email address already in our system".
"Yes, the one I used to get the Code."
" We have fixed that bug and will be adding reasons why registrations fail."

I tried again, using two different browsers: still get kicked off, no reasons. Another email sent......

One is starting to lose any confidence in this organisation!
 
I've been watching the CAO website since its inception to track its development. I am barely tech-savvy but even I could do much more far more quickly than they can. I shudder to think how the bureaucratic cogs within will grind away -- and how Board members -- especially the good ones -- will be made to suffer as a result.

Way to go Ontario! If you wanted to rein in rogue developers, you could have quashed the OMB.
 
A follow up! I finally managed to register our Corporation after they fixed the bugs in their system and generated our first CAO invoice. It was for a sum that was TOTALLY unexplained (except for a note saying they were not yet sure if HST applied and if it did we would be charged extra next year!). I wrote and asked how they arrived at the very odd figure. (The invoice only had a$$ amount on it, no explanation at all except "Registration Assessment Fee. The answer:

Thank you for your recent email regarding the Condominium Authority of Ontario’s (CAO) fees.

The regular CAO assessment cost is $1 per voting unit, per month. Annually, this will be $12 per voting unit.

The initial assessment to be paid is a transitory assessment that is to cover a corporation from September 1st, the launch of the CAO, until April 1st, the beginning of our next fiscal year (7 months). To be more transparent, the cost for this period has been calculated daily. The daily assessment fee ($12/365 days) is rounded to 3.29 cents, and is to cover the 212 days between Sept 1 and March 31st. This makes the price per unit, for the transitory assessment period, to be $6.97.

Your transitionary assessment’s formula is calculated as: (Total voting units) x $6.97

For example, a corporation with 100 voting units would pay an assessment of $697 (100 units x $6.97). For more information on the CAO’s fees, please visit the Condominium Authority of Ontario’s website at: https://www.condoauthorityontario.ca/en-US/about-cao/fees/.

I responded to say that it is hardly 'transparent' to do this and not give ANY explanation and that I saw no point in complicating a simple process. I have little or no hopes for this organisation!
 
Thanks for the info. Our management company was going to try to register us this week but I haven’t heard back yet.
 
PinkLucy said:
Thanks for the info. Our management company was going to try to register us this week but I haven’t heard back yet.
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Registering requires info like exact date of original Registration of the Condo, number of Units and the date all current Directors were last elected (but not their term of office).
 
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