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Family Sized Condos

I laugh at all the leaf bags lined up at curbs right now.
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I laugh at the $800 + in condo fees some pay for raking leaves and shovelling snow, not to mention the multi thousand dollar special assessment fees for leaking roofs, broken elevators, garage waterproofing, gardening, garbage pickup, which you pay for with your property taxes as well as maintenance fees, since the city does not collect garbage from condos.
To each their own, I've loved in condos but I prefer my house. It's downtown, I can walk to work and everywhere else. There is a market and grocery stores very nearby...I call them my pantry :)
 
Indeed... when you contract out 100% of that work you're paying through the nose for the privilege thanks to contractor overhead, property management fees, taxes, unionized tradespeople and so on. Given that condo fees are paid out of after-tax income, most people are paying a higher effective hourly rate for basic work than they make themselves!
 
AndreaPalladio said:
If you live in a house you have to pay people do all of the same things unless you are shacked up with Mike Holmes...
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Exactly.

I can't even remember all the contractors we had coming and going in our 27 years of homeowning in Riverdale -- and I am not counting renovations that we did because we wanted to. Plus we had to find them, meet with them, compare estimates between them, check their references, oversee the work and deal with fun surprises like, when we had to waterproof the foundation (oh joy!), we discovered that part of the foundation was crumbling. Like I said, time is money. Hours of work lost by one of us to deal with the problems. And, even when all seemed to go smoothly, something always happened. A sudden roof leak when you had just redone it, for example.

As for unions or whatever, yeah, you can pay cash and get fly-by-night contractors to rebuild your garage or deck, but they won't be around when they collapse.

Condo or house. It's always something that needs doing.

At least in a condo, you can walk away and let somebody else deal with it.

As for special assessments, yes, those happen. But only when you have a bad board that's incapable of planning or is so eager to keep fees down, it doesn't have the guts to say to owners, hey, we gotta go up x% now and next year or, otherwise, we will end up with a big fat special assessment on the status certificate which could make our units harder to sell.

Owners really have only one responsibility and that is to vote for and support the best board they can, not the one who promise low fees.
 
All of that stuff applies equally to condos, it's just that the scale is bigger and you have to hire someone to do even the most mundane of tasks.
 
AndreaPalladio said:
If you live in a house you have to pay people do all of the same things unless you are shacked up with Mike Holmes...
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...or were blessed with the skills and know how to use such tools as a screwdriver and hammer, rake, shovel and broom, oh my!
I'm sorry that you don't have those capabilities, but please speak for yourself, many of us are not as helpless.
 
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I can't even remember all the contractors we had coming and going in our 27 years of homeowning in Riverdale
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You're right, home ownership is not for those who can't do many things.
 
doug said:
...or were blessed with the skills and know how to use such tools as a screwdriver and hammer, rake, shovel and broom, oh my!
I'm sorry that you don't have those capabilities, but please speak for yourself, many of us are not as helpless.
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I'm not helpless either. I have a corporation taking care of all those things so I can live a life!
 
AndreaPalladio said:
I'm not helpless either. I have a corporation taking care of all those things so I can live a life!
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+100.

I am sure all the handy posters here would have no problem repaving their driveways, waterproofing their foundations, installing new windows or hanging new gutters all by themselves. I personally prefer to leave the grunt work to grunts, and pay a hundred bucks a month or so for the freedom I get as result.
 
+1
Loving the condo life. Going on a trip, close the door and forget about it. With a busy family and work schedule Inwould rather spend time with my kids than to spend time between Home Depot and Canadian Tire and at home doing home improvements or dealing with contractors.

As a member of my condo board, I can tell you that the main expenses are utilities, management, security and cleaners. The amenities do take some investment but the rest if the costs are day to day expenses and saving for the future. Dealing with contractors is one of the main tasks of a property manager. It's a tough job and requires good people skills. One big reason why condo fees are high now is because reserve investments earn peanuts. We can't invest in the market and are stuck with GICs and fed/prov bonds. A five year best of breed GIC rate now available is 2.1%. That barely beats inflation and is nowhere close to meeting construction costs and labour inflation. One thing that hit condos hard is the HST in Ontario. Since everything is a service cost, we went from paying 5% to 13% taxes overnight.

I think we need developers to build more basic buildings with large units. There should be condos without a concierge, or pool. Something basic like a party room, garden and gym would be sufficient. If a building is small enough, the board could run it without the expense of a large property management company. That's why mid rise and smaller buildings should be encouraged by the city. They are much easier to manage than large buildings. Smaller buildings also tend to attract more owners and fewer tenants people will get to know neighbours and build a true community. In a large building with transient population this is very difficult.
 
I'm on my board as well and you make excellent points.

I wasn't in a condo when the HST came in so I didn't notice the hit but I do know how hard it is to max out the reserve fund return because of the ultra-conservative rules. All that money, pretty much just sitting there!

Our largest expenses ongoing are also utilities. But at least we pay bulk rates. That means that, over all, owners pay less per unit than they would if there were in small houses or even if they were metered. (We have had the hydro meter debate a million times and always decide against it for a number of reasons, including the face that we pay "wholesale.") Newer builds must have individual hydro meters. We're older so we don't.

I can't see developers building basic buildings with larger units, the way they might have post-WW2. Too many of them are in it for the quick buck. They're in the volume business. And they won't be around to clean up their mess in 20-30 years.
 
AndreaPalladio said:
I'm not helpless either. I have a corporation taking care of all those things so I can live a life!
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Some of us non helpless people enjoy doing things for ourselves, we call it living our lives, we also tend to be less pompous about it than condo dwellers, it seems.
 
Ex-Montreal Girl said:
+100.

I am sure all the handy posters here would have no problem repaving their driveways, waterproofing their foundations, installing new windows or hanging new gutters all by themselves. I personally prefer to leave the grunt work to grunts, and pay a hundred bucks a month or so for the freedom I get as result.
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Yes indeed, only grunts live in houses.....where driveway repaving and basement waterproofing have to be done every 3 months. In condos, fairies swoop in, collecting condo fees, and do it in the middle of the night, so that the condo dwellers can ride their bicycles to the pantry and frolic in the park, free as birds, with nothing but an ever increasing monthly maintenance fee.
 
doug said:
Yes indeed, only grunts live in houses.....where driveway repaving and basement waterproofing have to be done every 3 months. In condos, fairies swoop in, collecting condo fees, and do it in the middle of the night, so that the condo dwellers can ride their bicycles to the pantry and frolic in the park, free as birds, with nothing but an ever increasing monthly maintenance fee.
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Well, some tend to be less pompous, but not Dougie.
 
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