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We got our new budget pckage yesterday. Our fees are going up 2.1%. We have a new Reserve Fund Study and the board has accepted the engineers' recommended funding for the study. (Some boards ignore the study or go cheap.) I was at an AGM last week in Mississauga where the engineers recommended...

If your condo corporation is a few years old, condo fees increases should match the inflation rate. If your condo has not raised the fees for a few years, or if it is a newly built condo, then you should expect to see higher than normal fee increases to make up for fees than may have been set...

The owners can ask but the board does not always comply. Just because the Act gives owners certain rights, the boards/managers can safely ignore those rights. The Condominium Act is self-policing so if an owner asks to examine certain records, the request must be made correctly and even if that...

They are planning to have the first residents move in in late July. Enterance will be on Avenue Road. The sales office will move into botton floor soon at about the same time.

I see that a lot at the AGMs I attend. You have presidents who cannot preside a meeting, secretaries who cannot write minutes or handle the corporation's correspondence and treasurers who can't read the financial statements. They are just puppets warming seats. The property management company...

A president who openly gives himself/herself special treatment creates a lot of resentment. I have not heard anything about 360. They are a small company. It seems that you have figured out what is going on and you know that the management company works for the board not the owners. You have...

The sales office, presently on Yorkville Avenue may be open now. The hoarding has new signs advertising the Cumberland Tower. Prices start from $350,000 and go up into the millions.

Eventually. This site will have three condo buildings and all will hold retail shops.

Yes, it is real. Some new condos are known to have very serious problems while others hide their problems very well so they remain largely undetected. Think of the cheaper lines of Ikea furniture. It has style, is good looking and it is cheap. Life expectancy? A few years at most. Yet...

It is expensive to replace windows, up to $3 million on a large tower so they are often the last thing to get replaced. Some condos built in the 1970's still have the original single-pane windows. The money, if they have any, gets spent on fixing the underground garages, up to $9 million...

A recent story in the Ottawa Citizen tells the tale of a condo who ignored expensive repairs for years and then the owners, who happened to be holding the bag, got hit with a $53 million special assessment; about $40K or more each. That is one thing but the several years ahead of living in a...

I have been e-mailed a section from a new-construction sales agreement that warns the original owners that the condo tower is close to a major bus terminal, train tracks and is at the end of the subway. I'll place it on my website soon. The sales agreement also says that the residents may...

Any conversion is not covered by Tarion. There have been some horror stories about them, especially a church conversion in the west end. There is a hotel conversion that also has serious problems. Owners get stuck with huge special assessments to repair construction deficiencies. Don't buy a...

Their parents buy them as investments as a way for the family to immigrate to Canada as investors. They rent them out until their kids are ready to go to university. Then their kids live in them. Finally, they sell them. Wait and see. In three years 1 Bedford will have 1/4 to half of their units...

The local bars and restaurants will be thrilled to have another 400 or so university students living in the area.

I was not talking about the holiday season. Freight trains and the TTC buses operate every day and night so the noise that these three buildings endure happen 365 days a year. If you worry about noise in condos be careful of night-time street noises such as food deliveries to restaurants...

So when does the sales office open?

This type of issue is common in both new and older condos.

What you are talking about is quite common. Your landlord gets his rent and the board cares less for investors "landlords" than for the resident-owners who vote for them. The best way to get action is if your landlord documented the problems, has a paper trail and is willing to sue the...

The board should write a Owner's and Resident's Guide for your building. It will take awhile but you can do it slowly, updating it with newer editions once a year or so until you have what you need. The writing and editing of the handbook teaches the directors at the same time which is a real...