Toronto M5V Condominiums | 118.87m | 35s | Lifetime | Core Architects

wow, that is shocking and disgusting! you have my deepest sympathies for the appalling work that you have had to accept in your new place. Hearing stories like this just makes me even more certain that I would never buy pre-construction. Best of luck. I think you will indeed have to put in your own effort to try and fix as many of those deficiencies as possible...
 
wow, that is shocking and disgusting! you have my deepest sympathies for the appalling work that you have had to accept in your new place. Hearing stories like this just makes me even more certain that I would never buy pre-construction. Best of luck. I think you will indeed have to put in your own effort to try and fix as many of those deficiencies as possible...

Thank you. We appriciate the kind words.
It's definately opened our eyes. And yes, a lot of work will need to be put into our new home.
 
Thank you. We appriciate the kind words.
It's definately opened our eyes. And yes, a lot of work will need to be put into our new home.

You did the right thing posting those photos. And telling the truth VS covering up cut corners for resale value....selflessness>selfishness
Hope everything works out well for you and thank you for sharing those photos.
 
Sigh.

Because the status quo sucks.

We all tend to hide our shame and hope that it'll all go away, but in reality it won't. My unit will still be a poorly constructed house.
My wife and I will just deal with it.. like we've dealt with all the other curve balls life has thown us.

This is our home. Not an investment. And when we do sell one day, then we'll be forced to spend our hard earned dollars again bring it up to shape. That's why I'm doing this.

Are we hurting ourselves in the long run? Maybe. But I hope to at least raise awareness about a situation that perhaps too many people shy away from.

Peace

Didn't you do a PDI? Were any of these defects noted during the PDI? If not, you still have a chance to report them after 1 year of occupancy. I had a few minor issues (Tile cracked, some cracking on walls, cabinet finish issue) that were fixed with my 1st year Tarion warranty here at Luna. Read through Tarion to see what is covered and what is not, and make a list so you can submit when the time comes. Concord-Adex went above and beyond, offering to fix any cracks on walls within the first year, something that is not covered by Tarion. See if your builder is offering anything like that.
 
That's absolutely mind boggling.

Why would you go to such effort to draw attention to the piss poor quality of your own investment? So that prospective resale buyers can see your photos that and realize that your unit isn't worth nearly what you'd ask for it?

Why not just shoot yourself in the kneecaps while you're at it?

I read your first sentence and couldn't agree more... Then I got to the rest and it made me sad about the current state of society :(
 
The builder and developer will just try to wear you down as you try to get your in-suite issues addressed. Get to know your neighbours and start to collect up similar lists of deficiencies. Never belittle a fault. A crack in a new suite is a deficiency. A year out, it is "settling," so highlight every crack right now and complain about it. A neighbour of mine logged 200 phone calls for pipe noise. The pipe was found to be defective, but he'd still have the noise if he had not called ten or fifteen times a day.

Any hidden spaces will be full of junk. You probably don't want to look inside your air ducts (or maybe you do). The spaces below kitchen cabinets are often filled with enough dust and crap to choke a vacuum cleaner. Sloppy is the norm. Reasonable is superior. Superior is virtually unheard of.

If your building is registered and you have an elected board of directors, make sure they do a thorough walk-through of every part of the building and list every deficiency they can identify - no matter how trivial. Hopefully they will hire a good engineer for the building performance audit. Given what you have shown here, my guess would be that the common elements are of similar poor quality. They will need a very thorough inspection.
 
Didn't you do a PDI? Were any of these defects noted during the PDI? If not, you still have a chance to report them after 1 year of occupancy. I had a few minor issues (Tile cracked, some cracking on walls, cabinet finish issue) that were fixed with my 1st year Tarion warranty here at Luna. Read through Tarion to see what is covered and what is not, and make a list so you can submit when the time comes. Concord-Adex went above and beyond, offering to fix any cracks on walls within the first year, something that is not covered by Tarion. See if your builder is offering anything like that.

Yes, we did a PDI. But our rep who walked us through basically said "oh we'll fix that before you move in" or "that's normal... but we'll make sure its ok" or something along those lines. In fact, we noted a number of dents in our floor. And when I went to do the follow up, they had simply filled in the holes with cheap wood filler. I refused to sign off on the wood they did and told them to fix it again. In the end, I was told "dents are no longer covered once you move in", which makes sense from angle that I could have caused some on the move in, but what about those I didn't sign off on?

Naive? Sure, you can call us that. We don't care. But how much can be reasonably be expected of first time buyers. We tried to do our best and it wasn't good enough.

We're doing what we can with Tarion and the Lifetime Development rep, but we're not holding our breath.



The builder and developer will just try to wear you down as you try to get your in-suite issues addressed. Get to know your neighbours and start to collect up similar lists of deficiencies. Never belittle a fault. A crack in a new suite is a deficiency. A year out, it is "settling," so highlight every crack right now and complain about it. A neighbour of mine logged 200 phone calls for pipe noise. The pipe was found to be defective, but he'd still have the noise if he had not called ten or fifteen times a day.

Any hidden spaces will be full of junk. You probably don't want to look inside your air ducts (or maybe you do). The spaces below kitchen cabinets are often filled with enough dust and crap to choke a vacuum cleaner. Sloppy is the norm. Reasonable is superior. Superior is virtually unheard of.

If your building is registered and you have an elected board of directors, make sure they do a thorough walk-through of every part of the building and list every deficiency they can identify - no matter how trivial. Hopefully they will hire a good engineer for the building performance audit. Given what you have shown here, my guess would be that the common elements are of similar poor quality. They will need a very thorough inspection.


That's exactly how we feel, that's why we made that blog. I am afraid to pull back and look into the dark spaces, but if that's what I need to do, then thats what I need to do. We have a child coming into this world soon and I'm going to see if I can't clean up before the little one starts crawling around on the floor.

I'm trying to get other M5V'ers to share their experiences too, but I'm not so sure they will be so forthcoming. Heck, they might even hate me for exposing our shame.


Thanks again for the kind and thoughtful replies
 
Don't give up! While what you got IS standard for "standard finishes", you are right that standard is, in fact, unacceptable. Developers race these trades through each suite, slapping the units together on strict schedules. It saves them money, but it is appalling to se what they try to get away with.
 
I think this will be a growing problem, with more and more condos being built at one time and buildings getting larger, contractors are having a hard time keeping up with tight schedules.

Definitely keep a paper trail on every single problem so you have a record of communicating to the developer about it, and be very persistant. There are probably a few hundred other owners in your same situation in your building.
In my experience, if you maintain a good friendly relationship with the trades and construction manager who are still working in the building, you could often get things fixed very quickly. I don't know if that is still the case these days.

Tucker Highrise is a large constuction company currently building lots of condos in the city. You would think their workmanship should be decent and be able resolve any issues in a reasonable amount of time.
Good luck.
 
Don't give up! While what you got IS standard for "standard finishes", you are right that standard is, in fact, unacceptable. Developers race these trades through each suite, slapping the units together on strict schedules. It saves them money, but it is appalling to se what they try to get away with.

Yeah... you'd think standard finishes didn't translate into poor finishes.

Speaking of finishes, I have an interesting investigation I'm doing on the painting.. or lack of painting in some areas. Look forward to my post on that.


I think this will be a growing problem, with more and more condos being built at one time and buildings getting larger, contractors are having a hard time keeping up with tight schedules.

Definitely keep a paper trail on every single problem so you have a record of communicating to the developer about it, and be very persistant. There are probably a few hundred other owners in your same situation in your building.
In my experience, if you maintain a good friendly relationship with the trades and construction manager who are still working in the building, you could often get things fixed very quickly. I don't know if that is still the case these days.

Tucker Highrise is a large construction company currently building lots of condos in the city. You would think their workmanship should be decent and be able resolve any issues in a reasonable amount of time.
Good luck.


Paper already going. Emails between me and Lifetime. Also, have some of the dents which haven't been fixed which I didn't sign off on. I dunno about the friendly relationship and getting fixed on time. Sometimes I just don't get a response from these people.. its a bit annoying.

As for Tucker, really disappointed. And I'm curious to find out how many other building they've built look like this. If I find out I'll be adding it to my blog.
 
Paper already going. Emails between me and Lifetime. Also, have some of the dents which haven't been fixed which I didn't sign off on. I dunno about the friendly relationship and getting fixed on time. Sometimes I just don't get a response from these people.. its a bit annoying.

If my memory serves me right, about a year or so ago, someone had made a post similar to your post, about quality of workmanship, in one of their projects in Markham.
 
What I saw in your photos is totally unacceptable. That is poor workmanship and not excusable.

I do live in X condo, which Tucker HiRise is associated with and I can tell you that nothing like what you have shown has happened here. The quality of workmanship here at X is excellent. Could it be that certain trades working at M5V just didn't give a damn? Are the trades not paid per unit, hence why they cut corners? Who signed off on your unit before you occupied it? They should have seen all those problems and made sure the unit was 100% before you moved in. You see issues like that in a 40 year old apartment building, not a brand new condo.

You are doing the right thing by letting the public know about your situation. Is this a pure reflection of Lifetime/Tucker HiRise - it's hard to say. Or is it a pure reflection of the trades that were hired? Whatever the case, someone needs to be held responsible for such horrific work.
 

Back
Top