casaguy
Senior Member
This one was totally off my radar. The name sounds impressive, but the building... not so much. What was here before?
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The Jarvis Mansions
- Thread starter casaguy
- Start date
FSGIRL
New Member
I looked at this development in 2003, it has had a slow start. I recall the front is a restoration of an old mansion on the property, with the back units all a new addition. The floorplans were nice looking, with skylights and large rooms, 10 ft ceilings, 6" moldings, etc....but I believe there have been some kind of trouble in the sales process as it changed companies midway.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
FSGIRL:
Welcome, and you are right indeed about this project being a troubled one:
If it seems too cheap, it is too cheap
Buyers warned to look into developer's record
Oct 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Tracy Hanes
Toronto Star
Sometimes bad things happen to good projects even in the GTA's thriving condo market.
Luckily for most buyers, receiverships as in the case of Jarvis Mansions are uncommon; but occasionally a project does get into trouble.
The Whitby Yacht Club, launched in 2000, went into receivership in 2004 before being purchased by the Whitby Waterfront Development Corp. and relaunched, with units reflecting higher market value. About 33 of the original 100 purchasers chose to stay with the project, which is now built.
Others may not fall into receivership, but run into problems and get taken over by another builder, such as Queen West Vintage Lofts, which was relaunched by Plazacorp as Chocolate Factory Lofts, and Avante, which Cresford Developments took over and relaunched as Bloor Street Neighbourhood.
Just last week, purchasers at another Cresford project, Mode, were told their sales agreements were being cancelled because the developer could not get the density it wanted approved by the city.
Condo broker Brad Lamb says there are three major reasons why condo projects get into trouble.
"First is marketing. If you can't sell it, you can't build it and your loan gets recalled," he says. "Or you might underestimate the cost of building and sell the units too cheaply. This is the typical way people lose a project.
"Then you have inexperienced, first-time builders who are design-oriented and allow buyers to customize and make a lot of changes. All of these custom units incur a lot of extra costs."
Or a project may have avoided all of the aforementioned pitfalls but run into some other sort of trouble. Lamb cites one project where higher-than-expected levels of hydrocarbons were found in the earth as excavation started, causing the project to be shut down for several months while the problem was remedied.
He said the builder was a large one with plenty of financial resources, but such a situation would have been beyond the means of a small builder.
Condo consultant Jeanhy Shim says small builders often are not able to get conventional financing through large banks and have to use other lenders and end up paying steep interest charges. Two of the five mortgages on Jarvis Mansions were at 36 per cent.
"It's difficult for smaller guys and often financing is the trickiest part," she says.
Another problem is that as big builders have a lock on most Toronto condo sites and smaller builders can't afford to buy land for new projects.
They instead look to small, infill sites or old warehouses or buildings they can convert, says Harry Herskowitz, condo law specialist and a Tarion board member.
How can buyers be aware that a project may get into trouble?
"If it seems too cheap, it is too cheap," Lamb says.
"If one project is selling for $50 less per square foot than the one next door, it won't get completed or the builder will chintz on finishes and substitute cheap materials."
Also be wary if a developer has "zero experience in the development world."
Get particulars on what that experience might be – for example, an architect may have designed previous projects but never acted as a developer before.
Buyers should research their developer or builder for their track record and length of time in business. Conversion projects won't be listed on Tarion's website, but Lamb says a Google search may turn up information. Many purchasers, especially dissatisfied ones, start blogs chronicling their experience with a particular project.
AoD
Welcome, and you are right indeed about this project being a troubled one:
If it seems too cheap, it is too cheap
Buyers warned to look into developer's record
Oct 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Tracy Hanes
Toronto Star
Sometimes bad things happen to good projects even in the GTA's thriving condo market.
Luckily for most buyers, receiverships as in the case of Jarvis Mansions are uncommon; but occasionally a project does get into trouble.
The Whitby Yacht Club, launched in 2000, went into receivership in 2004 before being purchased by the Whitby Waterfront Development Corp. and relaunched, with units reflecting higher market value. About 33 of the original 100 purchasers chose to stay with the project, which is now built.
Others may not fall into receivership, but run into problems and get taken over by another builder, such as Queen West Vintage Lofts, which was relaunched by Plazacorp as Chocolate Factory Lofts, and Avante, which Cresford Developments took over and relaunched as Bloor Street Neighbourhood.
Just last week, purchasers at another Cresford project, Mode, were told their sales agreements were being cancelled because the developer could not get the density it wanted approved by the city.
Condo broker Brad Lamb says there are three major reasons why condo projects get into trouble.
"First is marketing. If you can't sell it, you can't build it and your loan gets recalled," he says. "Or you might underestimate the cost of building and sell the units too cheaply. This is the typical way people lose a project.
"Then you have inexperienced, first-time builders who are design-oriented and allow buyers to customize and make a lot of changes. All of these custom units incur a lot of extra costs."
Or a project may have avoided all of the aforementioned pitfalls but run into some other sort of trouble. Lamb cites one project where higher-than-expected levels of hydrocarbons were found in the earth as excavation started, causing the project to be shut down for several months while the problem was remedied.
He said the builder was a large one with plenty of financial resources, but such a situation would have been beyond the means of a small builder.
Condo consultant Jeanhy Shim says small builders often are not able to get conventional financing through large banks and have to use other lenders and end up paying steep interest charges. Two of the five mortgages on Jarvis Mansions were at 36 per cent.
"It's difficult for smaller guys and often financing is the trickiest part," she says.
Another problem is that as big builders have a lock on most Toronto condo sites and smaller builders can't afford to buy land for new projects.
They instead look to small, infill sites or old warehouses or buildings they can convert, says Harry Herskowitz, condo law specialist and a Tarion board member.
How can buyers be aware that a project may get into trouble?
"If it seems too cheap, it is too cheap," Lamb says.
"If one project is selling for $50 less per square foot than the one next door, it won't get completed or the builder will chintz on finishes and substitute cheap materials."
Also be wary if a developer has "zero experience in the development world."
Get particulars on what that experience might be – for example, an architect may have designed previous projects but never acted as a developer before.
Buyers should research their developer or builder for their track record and length of time in business. Conversion projects won't be listed on Tarion's website, but Lamb says a Google search may turn up information. Many purchasers, especially dissatisfied ones, start blogs chronicling their experience with a particular project.
AoD
khris
Senior Member
Wow is that ever ugly.
dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
Indeed. The original part of the home (the half on the left) was somewhat rundown but still had some nice features and plenty of charm remaining. The half on the right looked like a square, brick "bingo hall" type add-on perhaps in the 60's or 70's. This project began when ROCP1 was still a hole in the ground, that's how long this has taken to get to this point.
Irishmonk
Senior Member
Looks like it was carved out of butter. Blechh...!
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Add this to the list of blah yellow gazings to the past - such as the Georgian pile on Queen, and the similar stuff on Bathurst.
BuildTO
Active Member
For those of you who missed this in the Star, it's pretty heartbreaking for some of the purchasers:
CONDO CONVERSION
Nightmare on Jarvis St.
Purchasers' deposit money tied up four years only to see retrofit project go into receivership days before completion
Oct 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Tracy Hanes
Toronto Star
When Barbara Miodonski was widowed two years ago, she helped deal with her grief by thinking of the joy she would derive from owning a home for the first time in her life.
The 438-square-foot $162,000 unit she was purchasing at Jarvis Mansions – a condo combining new construction and a retrofit of a 19th-century mansion at 539 Jarvis St. – symbolized a fresh start after her husband's death.
"I honestly felt like a tourist in Canada until I could own my own home," says Miodonski, who moved from her native Poland to Toronto 20 years ago. "This project has the feeling of Europe and it very much touched my emotions."
But Miodonski and two dozen other Jarvis Mansions buyers have had their emotions touched in a very different way in the past two weeks. The project by Panterra Mansions Joint Venture Corp. went into receivership with some of their units just days from completion.
Though the buyers will have the opportunity to repurchase their suites, prices will be adjusted to reflect the current market value, not those of four years ago when most of their deals were made.
Though those who choose not to buy will get their initial deposits back with interest (most put down 10 to 15 per cent), they may not recoup thousands of dollars spent on upgrades or any of the equity accrued in Toronto's hot market of recent years.
SF Partners Inc., a bankruptcy trustee, has been appointed as interim receiver after two of the five mortgage holders filed an application to have a receiver take control of the development. Two of the mortgages were at 36 per cent interest. The application was approved on Sept. 24 in Ontario Superior Court.
According to the application, the project came to a standstill because of nine liens against it in July and August, including a $2,043,876.94 claim by the general contractor, Pegah Construction.
In an email to purchasers Caroline and Mike Northfield in late August, Panterra president/architect Sheldon Rosen said the developer was at an impasse with Pegah and construction had "temporarily" stopped.
A phone message left at Panterra offices requesting comment on the receivership was not returned.
An Aug. 7 report from Altus Helyar, a real estate cost consulting firm, said that Pegah had made many change order requests to its original contracted "guaranteed maximum price" of $5,444,000, some of which had been approved, while others had not. The report says due to this "and the ongoing source of funding shortfall on the project," Pegah had not been able to pay their trades in full and work had come to a virtual halt.
Brahm Rosen, senior vice-president of SF Partners Inc. (and no relation to Panterra president Rosen), says construction to complete the project will restart as early as this week and the suites will go back up for sale at current market value soon. He says, "there will be a negotiation" with the original purchasers and the hope is that many of them will still want to buy their units.
The purchasers are considering hiring one lawyer to represent them as a group for negotiations with the receiver. There were 25 sales agreements in all, with 22 made in 2003, with most buyers being either first-time purchasers or empty nesters. Nine units had not sold.
If sales had proceeded under the previous agreements, there would have been an approximate $1.3 million shortfall between the generated revenue and what the project would have cost to complete, according to Altus Helyar.
For the purchasers, the receivership is a bitter end to a frustrating, four-year wait.
The tentative closing date they'd been originally given was Oct. 29, 2004.
However, tentative dates are not firm and can be changed; the "outside" date by which it should have closed was April 29, 2006, according to a sales agreement made four years ago.
Teacher Amy Powell, 39, and her husband Moe Doiron, 41, were excited about becoming first-time homeowners after signing an agreement to purchase a 924-square-foot, two-bedroom garden townhouse for $308,900 on Oct. 4, 2003. Over the next month and a half, Powell and Doiron provided about 10 per cent in deposits and as the project progressed, spent another $7,000 on upgrades.
"What is killing me more than anything is the equity that we have lost," Powell says. "Losing the upgrade money is small potatoes to losing out on the increased value of our original investment."
Deirdre Brennan, a provincial government employee, was living in a townhouse she owned next door when sales at Jarvis Mansions were launched.
She was captivated by the high ceilings and layouts and "thought it would be great for me, being in an old historic mansion." She bought an 840-square-foot, two-bedroom unit for $273,900. Brennan sold her townhouse last March, believing her unit would be ready June 1.
She learned in mid-May it would not be ready. She was allowed to move her furniture into her unit, providing she insured it. She moved in with another resident at her townhouse complex and had to scramble to remove her furniture from Jarvis Mansions three days before the Sept. 24 court hearing.
Brennan is waiting to see what can be negotiated for her to keep her unit.
"It's been quite devastating. I will find out what the best offer is, but I'm not sure I can afford to stay in the Toronto market," she says.
The same goes for Miodonski, whose voice breaks as she discusses her plight.
"It's extremely painful," she says. "I lost my husband and now I feel I lost everything else I had left. I can't afford my unit by myself at current market value. The biggest pain is that someone took my dream away from me. What is the current market value of a lost dream?"
Alan Pinkerton, president of a company that inspects medical gas lines at hospitals, bought a $317,900, 960-square-foot townhouse. He put 10 per cent down and spent about $3,500 in upgrades. Pinkerton, who was living in the neighbourhood, has since moved two or three times as he waited for his townhouse to be built. "I'm no different than a lot of the buyers," he says. "Most of us have sold properties based on move-in dates we were told. We've sold properties prematurely and lost equity. Every week we waited, we lost."
Don Duncan, a consultant, and his wife sold a house in Guelph to buy an 840-square-foot unit for $254,900, plus spent $17,000 for a parking spot and $7,000 on upgrades. He says over the past four years, he has been given 13 move-in dates.
"If I still want to buy it, do I have to buy the upgrades I've already paid for?" he wonders. "I invested time and money to improve this unit, for whose benefit? Our upgrades have enriched its current market value. It's a mess."
Condo law specialist Harry Herskowitz of DelZotto Zorzi LLP, who served on the special committee studying delayed closings for Tarion and is a Tarion board member, says under the Condominium Act Section 81, the upgrade money paid by the purchasers to the developer should have been held in trust; as it was not, the buyers could sue for breach of trust.
As the legal fees could be more than the upgrades cost, Herskowitz says it may not be worth suing individually but it may be worth hiring a lawyer to act for the group. Money paid directly to suppliers likely can't be recouped, he says.
Jean Paul Kyer and his wife Erica put a deposit down on a 1,000-square-foot unit in November 2003.
"It was perfect ... and we were able to redesign it to meet our needs," says Kyer, a consultant for IBM. "We wanted something small but stylish."
In August 2006, they got a call from the developer's staff telling them they should book their move-in date and time for that fall. They sold the loft they had been living in, but as the move-in date came and went, they moved to their cottage at Wasaga Beach and commuted to the city from there — a trip that ate up 3 1/2 hours a day.
Although they originally planned on adding upgrades to their suite, they got into a dispute with the developer because their upgrade money would not be put in trust.
"We were extremely uncomfortable about paying out anything that wasn't in trust," says Kyer. "We wanted to ensure that our money was protected."
Three weeks ago, the couple moved into a house they've purchased in High Park.
Caroline and Mike Northfield, who bought a unit for themselves to live in and a smaller one for investment purposes, have had furniture in storage and have been shuttling between a winter home in Florida and their son's house in Toronto since they sold their house while the wait dragged on.
"Believe me, the stress is awful," Caroline says. "We are pensioners and the money we invested in these units has just been sitting there, not making anything."
Herskowitz agrees that getting deposits back, with nominal interest, is little consolation for these buyers.
"That's not much benefit when condo prices have gone up 20 to 30 per cent in the last years," says Herskowitz. "I feel very, very bad for these purchasers."
He says the outcome would have been no different if the project was a new one covered by Tarion rules, which conversions are not. Herskowitz says Tarion has no plans to start covering conversion projects because the risks are too great. He says, however, that some conversion projects are among the most beautiful and unique condominiums in the city.
Herskowitz says builders "need a certain level of experience before they do conversions ... they are tricky projects. Even very experienced builders can run into unforeseen problems and delays and that eats away the profit margin.
"Builders need to be very well-heeled and very experienced to cover contingencies. Even so, a builder could have had five great experiences with conversions previously, then run into bad luck on the sixth."
CONDO CONVERSION
Nightmare on Jarvis St.
Purchasers' deposit money tied up four years only to see retrofit project go into receivership days before completion
Oct 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Tracy Hanes
Toronto Star
When Barbara Miodonski was widowed two years ago, she helped deal with her grief by thinking of the joy she would derive from owning a home for the first time in her life.
The 438-square-foot $162,000 unit she was purchasing at Jarvis Mansions – a condo combining new construction and a retrofit of a 19th-century mansion at 539 Jarvis St. – symbolized a fresh start after her husband's death.
"I honestly felt like a tourist in Canada until I could own my own home," says Miodonski, who moved from her native Poland to Toronto 20 years ago. "This project has the feeling of Europe and it very much touched my emotions."
But Miodonski and two dozen other Jarvis Mansions buyers have had their emotions touched in a very different way in the past two weeks. The project by Panterra Mansions Joint Venture Corp. went into receivership with some of their units just days from completion.
Though the buyers will have the opportunity to repurchase their suites, prices will be adjusted to reflect the current market value, not those of four years ago when most of their deals were made.
Though those who choose not to buy will get their initial deposits back with interest (most put down 10 to 15 per cent), they may not recoup thousands of dollars spent on upgrades or any of the equity accrued in Toronto's hot market of recent years.
SF Partners Inc., a bankruptcy trustee, has been appointed as interim receiver after two of the five mortgage holders filed an application to have a receiver take control of the development. Two of the mortgages were at 36 per cent interest. The application was approved on Sept. 24 in Ontario Superior Court.
According to the application, the project came to a standstill because of nine liens against it in July and August, including a $2,043,876.94 claim by the general contractor, Pegah Construction.
In an email to purchasers Caroline and Mike Northfield in late August, Panterra president/architect Sheldon Rosen said the developer was at an impasse with Pegah and construction had "temporarily" stopped.
A phone message left at Panterra offices requesting comment on the receivership was not returned.
An Aug. 7 report from Altus Helyar, a real estate cost consulting firm, said that Pegah had made many change order requests to its original contracted "guaranteed maximum price" of $5,444,000, some of which had been approved, while others had not. The report says due to this "and the ongoing source of funding shortfall on the project," Pegah had not been able to pay their trades in full and work had come to a virtual halt.
Brahm Rosen, senior vice-president of SF Partners Inc. (and no relation to Panterra president Rosen), says construction to complete the project will restart as early as this week and the suites will go back up for sale at current market value soon. He says, "there will be a negotiation" with the original purchasers and the hope is that many of them will still want to buy their units.
The purchasers are considering hiring one lawyer to represent them as a group for negotiations with the receiver. There were 25 sales agreements in all, with 22 made in 2003, with most buyers being either first-time purchasers or empty nesters. Nine units had not sold.
If sales had proceeded under the previous agreements, there would have been an approximate $1.3 million shortfall between the generated revenue and what the project would have cost to complete, according to Altus Helyar.
For the purchasers, the receivership is a bitter end to a frustrating, four-year wait.
The tentative closing date they'd been originally given was Oct. 29, 2004.
However, tentative dates are not firm and can be changed; the "outside" date by which it should have closed was April 29, 2006, according to a sales agreement made four years ago.
Teacher Amy Powell, 39, and her husband Moe Doiron, 41, were excited about becoming first-time homeowners after signing an agreement to purchase a 924-square-foot, two-bedroom garden townhouse for $308,900 on Oct. 4, 2003. Over the next month and a half, Powell and Doiron provided about 10 per cent in deposits and as the project progressed, spent another $7,000 on upgrades.
"What is killing me more than anything is the equity that we have lost," Powell says. "Losing the upgrade money is small potatoes to losing out on the increased value of our original investment."
Deirdre Brennan, a provincial government employee, was living in a townhouse she owned next door when sales at Jarvis Mansions were launched.
She was captivated by the high ceilings and layouts and "thought it would be great for me, being in an old historic mansion." She bought an 840-square-foot, two-bedroom unit for $273,900. Brennan sold her townhouse last March, believing her unit would be ready June 1.
She learned in mid-May it would not be ready. She was allowed to move her furniture into her unit, providing she insured it. She moved in with another resident at her townhouse complex and had to scramble to remove her furniture from Jarvis Mansions three days before the Sept. 24 court hearing.
Brennan is waiting to see what can be negotiated for her to keep her unit.
"It's been quite devastating. I will find out what the best offer is, but I'm not sure I can afford to stay in the Toronto market," she says.
The same goes for Miodonski, whose voice breaks as she discusses her plight.
"It's extremely painful," she says. "I lost my husband and now I feel I lost everything else I had left. I can't afford my unit by myself at current market value. The biggest pain is that someone took my dream away from me. What is the current market value of a lost dream?"
Alan Pinkerton, president of a company that inspects medical gas lines at hospitals, bought a $317,900, 960-square-foot townhouse. He put 10 per cent down and spent about $3,500 in upgrades. Pinkerton, who was living in the neighbourhood, has since moved two or three times as he waited for his townhouse to be built. "I'm no different than a lot of the buyers," he says. "Most of us have sold properties based on move-in dates we were told. We've sold properties prematurely and lost equity. Every week we waited, we lost."
Don Duncan, a consultant, and his wife sold a house in Guelph to buy an 840-square-foot unit for $254,900, plus spent $17,000 for a parking spot and $7,000 on upgrades. He says over the past four years, he has been given 13 move-in dates.
"If I still want to buy it, do I have to buy the upgrades I've already paid for?" he wonders. "I invested time and money to improve this unit, for whose benefit? Our upgrades have enriched its current market value. It's a mess."
Condo law specialist Harry Herskowitz of DelZotto Zorzi LLP, who served on the special committee studying delayed closings for Tarion and is a Tarion board member, says under the Condominium Act Section 81, the upgrade money paid by the purchasers to the developer should have been held in trust; as it was not, the buyers could sue for breach of trust.
As the legal fees could be more than the upgrades cost, Herskowitz says it may not be worth suing individually but it may be worth hiring a lawyer to act for the group. Money paid directly to suppliers likely can't be recouped, he says.
Jean Paul Kyer and his wife Erica put a deposit down on a 1,000-square-foot unit in November 2003.
"It was perfect ... and we were able to redesign it to meet our needs," says Kyer, a consultant for IBM. "We wanted something small but stylish."
In August 2006, they got a call from the developer's staff telling them they should book their move-in date and time for that fall. They sold the loft they had been living in, but as the move-in date came and went, they moved to their cottage at Wasaga Beach and commuted to the city from there — a trip that ate up 3 1/2 hours a day.
Although they originally planned on adding upgrades to their suite, they got into a dispute with the developer because their upgrade money would not be put in trust.
"We were extremely uncomfortable about paying out anything that wasn't in trust," says Kyer. "We wanted to ensure that our money was protected."
Three weeks ago, the couple moved into a house they've purchased in High Park.
Caroline and Mike Northfield, who bought a unit for themselves to live in and a smaller one for investment purposes, have had furniture in storage and have been shuttling between a winter home in Florida and their son's house in Toronto since they sold their house while the wait dragged on.
"Believe me, the stress is awful," Caroline says. "We are pensioners and the money we invested in these units has just been sitting there, not making anything."
Herskowitz agrees that getting deposits back, with nominal interest, is little consolation for these buyers.
"That's not much benefit when condo prices have gone up 20 to 30 per cent in the last years," says Herskowitz. "I feel very, very bad for these purchasers."
He says the outcome would have been no different if the project was a new one covered by Tarion rules, which conversions are not. Herskowitz says Tarion has no plans to start covering conversion projects because the risks are too great. He says, however, that some conversion projects are among the most beautiful and unique condominiums in the city.
Herskowitz says builders "need a certain level of experience before they do conversions ... they are tricky projects. Even very experienced builders can run into unforeseen problems and delays and that eats away the profit margin.
"Builders need to be very well-heeled and very experienced to cover contingencies. Even so, a builder could have had five great experiences with conversions previously, then run into bad luck on the sixth."
junctionist
Senior Member
Those experiences are incredibly unfortunate, especially considering the loss of equity. This is unjust, and buyers should have an easier time researching a developer's past experience. As for the building, it could look better in person, but not with that colour. The use of brick is a major characteristic of houses in Toronto, so when one becomes dilapidated, it isn't that noticeable. Graffiti will stick out on that lower wall that faces the parking lot. It's disposable architecture, and the name of the project is terrible. To this developer, a mansion is a synonym for a townhouse.
khris
Senior Member
That is a very sad story. Stuff like this gives developers a bad name me thinks.
Buying a new condo seems like such a scary thing. It really should be a happy time, and you shouldn't have to worry or be nervous. You really have to watch out for yourself now it seems.
Wasn't there also another project similar to this on either Church or Jarvis? It had walk up entrances in a small alley. And it looked like it was never going to be finished and used quite poor looking materials.
Buying a new condo seems like such a scary thing. It really should be a happy time, and you shouldn't have to worry or be nervous. You really have to watch out for yourself now it seems.
Wasn't there also another project similar to this on either Church or Jarvis? It had walk up entrances in a small alley. And it looked like it was never going to be finished and used quite poor looking materials.
dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
Yes, a tiny sliver of property off Jarvis Street directly south of the Radio City / National Ballet School properties.
adma
Superstar
Beware of stucco rehabs (also cf. the American-Standard site at Dupont + Lansdowne)
junctionist
Senior Member
That was such a lost opportunity. They demolished some of the factory, then did a conversion applying stucco to the exterior eliminating any heritage. The ultimate result was suburban style apartments fenced off from the street.
BUGEYEDBRIT
Active Member
it actually has the look of a dentists, or a doctors, certainly not somewhere to call home.
adma
Superstar
Its frightening bleakness is beneath "suburban style apartments". Of everything of this scale built in Toronto over the past decade, I'd nominate this as the most likely slum in utero...