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M1 + M2 + Metropolis + Parkside Condos (Liberty Development) - Real Estate -

What we're paying to the Superintendent isn't just his salary, but also the cost of having him occupy a suite. That includes maintenance fees, property taxes and hydro and possibly even the fair market value of the rent for his suite.

As for the Property Management Office - the salaries don't just include the actual gross income for each employee, but also the statutory deductions (CPP, EI, WSIB etc) and probably health and dental benefits as well.

The meeting on May 9th is a great place to ask questions. At my boyfriends condo, they didn't have enough people show up for their AGM or fill out their proxies and they had to cancel the meeting and reschedule. This meant paying the lawyer, accountant and secretary to show up twice! Let's make sure that doesn't happen to us!
 
Property management sure is generous when it comes to paying themselves with our maintenance fees, that's great. Why stop there? They should just each pay themselves 250k/yr and pat themselves on the back for a job well done since it seems like there's no accountability.

But seriously, who determines their salary? The condo board?
 
MetropolisM3 said:
Property management sure is generous when it comes to paying themselves with our maintenance fees, that's great. Why stop there? They should just each pay themselves 250k/yr and pat themselves on the back for a job well done since it seems like there's no accountability.

But seriously, who determines their salary? The condo board?
Click to expand...

Should be fun to watch for clarification on may 9th.

Speaking of the financial statement:
-notice the double repair cost (5,000 vs. 9,600 actual) of the compactor, this is for all the people who just throw their sh** down and not think twice. meh, probably all renters anyway.
-how about recreation facilities more than double the cost to upkeep, where do you think it costs 59K to upkeep?

other than those 3-4, I can't see anything alarming in the statement
 
I think the market determines their salary but it will be interesting to hear if there is actually any accountability.

Living in a condo has taught me that people, in general, are disgusting and don't care about their neighbours! Dogs barking, kids screaming and of course, garbage left on the floor in the garbage room for somebody else to deal with.
 
Joe Camel(Toe) said:
Should be fun to watch for clarification on may 9th.

Speaking of the financial statement:
-notice the double repair cost (5,000 vs. 9,600 actual) of the compactor, this is for all the people who just throw their sh** down and not think twice. meh, probably all renters anyway.
-how about recreation facilities more than double the cost to upkeep, where do you think it costs 59K to upkeep?

other than those 3-4, I can't see anything alarming in the statement
Click to expand...

I wonder if recreation facilities was budgeted for all 4 buildings contributing? Remember: M1 & M2 were covering the costs of ALL common elements up till now, when M3 and M4 will start contributing.

As for property management... That should be interesting because we pay $165k in management fees, and $45k for "Management fee administration." The managers work for Online Property Management, so there's possibly a company fee too for them to manage their office and what not. Again, something for the meeting.

And with security, let's see: 345,000/2 buildings is 172500. Divide that by 366 days and you get 471.31. Divide that by 24, it's just under 20/hour, not counting statutory holidays. Security here makes between 11 and 13/hour (I've asked them), so the rest goes to Condor for benefits and management I guess.

The garage was also way above budget... Broken doors, people driving over the call box multiple times...

So is there gonna be the UrbanToronto Caucus at the meeting? :D What else we gonna bring up?
 
LongTimeListener said:
As for property management... That should be interesting because we pay $165k in management fees, and $45k for "Management fee administration." The managers work for Online Property Management, so there's possibly a company fee too for them to manage their office and what not. Again, something for the meeting.
Click to expand...

As well as 10K in office budget for who knows what.

Whats 'management fees' vs 'management fee administration'

With fees, salaries, and the office, it comes to 220K a year, thats 13.28% of the actual expense.

One would think the board, with their experience, would know if thats a safe percentage. This is my first condo budget statement so Im just wondering more so than peeved.

I am more interested in the superintendent getting 70k a year, ha.
 
knowing that liberty is a value to medium builder, i doubt they chose expensive anything. Because they have to also pay to cover expenses in the beginning.

I will attend the meeting, but in the end of it, i'm sure we will have one too many people with broken english yelling to fire them all.

Like everyone else i don't want fees to jump or want inefficient use of our money. But also we shouldn't be too stingy.

Some suggestions though i have to cut costs are.

1. Once all buildings are filled, have only 2 security guards for all 4 buildings during Monday to Thur. Does anyone ever even see their guards? The more i think about it, the more dumb the main entrance design is. Traffic to enter is on Sheppard and Allen. Unless you get dropped off, or do PDI nobody enters from the inside circle. Its like no security at all. Still at least 2 guards required on premise to issue V parking, take care of noise complaints and walk around to make sure no bums are around. But again how many V parking, noise complaints will there b during a weekday?

2. Is there a super for each building? Again not necessary.

3. Anyone even use the golf simulation room? i've used it once and nobody i talked to ever uses it. Some don't even know it exists. Maybe get rid of it and make it into a ping pong room or better yet , take down the inside wall and make the gym bigger. We don't have to buy more machines to increase costs, but maybe another multi cable gym, half/full rack, another weight set and actually room to work out. Also increase space for people who want to do yoga, or lie on the mat to stretch.
 
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You guys need to run and not let anyone including property mgt walk all over us. I may run but I will not be able to make the first part of the mtg. It's time to take this stuff seriously or in the long run we will all be paying big time.
 
yaz16 said:
I will attend the meeting, but in the end of it, i'm sure we will have one too many people with broken english yelling to fire them all.
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HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! yaz for condo board!

yaz16 said:
1. Once all buildings are filled, have only 2 security guards for all 4 buildings during Monday to Thur. Does anyone ever even see their guards? The more i think about it, the more dumb the main entrance design is. Traffic to enter is on Sheppard and Allen. Unless you get dropped off, or do PDI nobody enters from the inside circle. Its like no security at all. Still at least 2 guards required on premise to issue V parking, take care of noise complaints and walk around to make sure no bums are around. But again how many V parking, noise complaints will there b during a weekday?

2. Is there a super for each building? Again not necessary.

3. Anyone even use the golf simulation room? i've used it once and nobody i talked to ever uses it. Some don't even know it exists. Maybe get rid of it and make it into a ping pong room or better yet , take down the inside wall and make the gym bigger. We don't have to buy more machines to increase costs, but maybe another multi cable gym, half/full rack, another weight set and actually room to work out. Also increase space for people who want to do yoga, or lie on the mat to stretch.
Click to expand...

I've never paid much attention in M1 to the security layout, and haven't been in M3 or M4 yet, but in M2, I'd say it's pretty split the number of people who enter from each side, and all of them have to pass the security guard to get to the elevator. So everyone in M2 sees security. We also need people monitoring the garbage room so we don't get fined by the City. I see the use of each building having a guard, since they also sign for all our packages, distribute the flyers, let realtors/authorities/etc. into each building... I see the use for it, though I do wonder why we never had a gatehouse setup instead, since we're next to the subway. It would definitely be more efficient.

M1 and M2 share a super. I don't know if he'll also be for M3/M4 or not. We'll have to wait and find out.

And from what I can tell, the golf simulator gets a lot of use. If you go on the building website, you can see in 'Booking Requests' that there's plenty of bookings this week, and keep clicking previous to see that it gets used by at least a few people everyday.
 
A note for the newcomers (and a reminder to the veterans): When your section of the parking garage is getting washed next week, you can move your car to visitor parking on P1 or outside. In the past, security has just skipped doing ticketing for the week. You'll probably see a note in your elevator if you need to get a pass or not, but in the past it's just leave your car there and don't worry about it.
 
I want to join the condo board, I'll make sure there's some accountability.

100 here, 1000 there, 100,000 somewhere else...it all adds up. I think each building requires 24/7 concierge, but if I went over the financial statements I'm sure I can find tons and tons of unnecessary waste. The more money that's wasted, the worse off all the owners will be in the long run. When it comes time for a major repair in 4-5 years and our reserve fund is not properly funded we're all going to pay for it. The way they see it , there'll never be a shortage of money, because they can always just raise our maintenance fees, kind of like how the government can just keep raising taxes. If there's no accountability waste will continue to happen, so we should try to make sure everything is managed properly.

I agree with eliminating the golf room. They should just make a games room and have ping pong, pool etc., I doubt anything will change, but it would be nice.
 
Oh uh kitchenstuffplus, i was there last weekend! Didn't find what I needed. My drawers measures 8" wide, is yours the same?
 
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