Miscellaneous condo news reports
I have collected a few news reports on condominium issues that I hope you will find interesting. My comments are in italics.
Small landlords who became homeless during pandemic blame 'broken' system
CBC News 11 April 2022
Some landlords in Ontario are becoming homeless — a situation legal experts say they've never seen happen before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Franchesca Ranger, found herself homeless during the pandemic after selling her marital home due to a divorce. She decided to move into her rental unit, a townhouse, and gave her tenant a 75-day termination notice with a move-out date of Aug. 31, 2020.
She says her tenant of four years refused to leave, stopped paying rent, and she was left to pay thousands a month in mortgage, property taxes, bills, and storage for her belongings.
This landlord bought a Toronto-area farm 2 years ago. But the tenant has barred him from the property
CBC News 18 April 2022
Meanwhile, he says, he's facing expenses of about $10,000 a month to pay mortgages, taxes and utilities on the farm, which he bought for $1.75 million. He says the tenant refuses to pay rent or allow him onto the property to inspect it for damage.
This has been dragged out for two years now.
Renting out your condo may be far riskier than you realize.
Ontario woman charged $280,000 extra for condo despite having signed contract
CTV News 07 April 2022
People who bought units in an Ontario condominium development said they were shocked when the developer raised prices and demanded more money despite them having signed contracts.
"They want me to pay almost $280,000 more for the same unit. I'm just shocked. Ramsey said she put a down payment on her Burlington condo unit in 2016, and has been waiting for it to be built. She then received a notification informing her that due to increasing construction costs, she would either have to pay more for her unit or take back her deposit and walk away from the unit.
Lawyer says trend linked to rising prices
Toronto real estate lawyer Blair Drummie is representing clients in similar situations and says the cancelled-agreement trend has emerged in response to surging construction costs and housing prices.
"Before the pandemic, nothing like this existed," said Drummie. "There would be no developer who would ever think to go to their customer and say, 'We need more money.'"
While developers do not have the right to increase prices, they are usually allowed to cancel agreements, Drummie said. But the practice undermines the trust of prospective buyers.
Sure the purchasers can get their deposits back but the prices of housing has skyrocketed over the last few years so they will have a hard time buying a new condo unit.
Ontario couple feels 'ripped off' after $42K added to their prefab home's price
CBC News 14 April 2022
A Jarvis, Ont., couple who tore down their home to make way for a prefabricated one wants to warn aspiring homebuyers about builders who raise the price even after contracts with agreed-to prices are signed.
Eric, 63, and Cathy Hilton, 61, said they felt the sting of house prices growing unexpectedly because of developers charging new-home owners more than they originally anticipated.
According to the couple, in March 2021, they made an initial deposit of $5,000 and signed a purchase agreement with Comfort Homes in Woodstock, Ont., to secure their "retirement home" at a cost of $209,728.
They say mere weeks before the date they were promised their prefabricated house would be delivered, the company told them they had to pay $42,000 more.
The purchase agreement with the Hiltons says "any changes or modifications" to the price are at the discretion of the company.
The couple asked for their deposit to be returned.
They're called 'transit-oriented communities.' But to some GTA residents, they're a 'condo wasteland'
CBC News 20 January 2022
Some residents and municipal leaders are concerned two large-scale developments the Ontario government is planning along the Yonge North Subway Extension in Richmond Hill and Markham will bring too much density to the area.
"It's effectively going to be a condo wasteland," said Graham Churchill, a Richmond Hill resident since 2005.
The developments are part of the province's plan to increase the supply of homes as a solution to bring down the soaring price of housing. That includes fast-tracking transit projects in the Greater Toronto Area and creating mixed-use areas around the transit hubs called "transit-oriented communities (TOCs)" to reduce urban sprawl. The government is partnering with developers who will foot much of the cost of the infrastructure.
The High Tech subway station TOC will bring 33 towers — some of them 80 storeys tall — to the Richmond Hill site north of Highway 407 and east of Yonge Street. The Bridge subway station TOC will bring 34 high-rises to the Markham site just south of Highway 407 and east of Yonge Street .
The developments are expected to bring in about 80,000 new residents overall, according to York Region.
What is this “condo wasteland” slur? York Region wants the Yonge Street subway extended north but the NIMBY’s don’t want the density that a subway needs to be viable.
A drug company says a Toronto condo project would threaten 'national security.' Here's why
CBC News 21 January 2022
A pharmaceutical company in north Toronto is objecting to a proposed condo development next door on the grounds that the hundreds of residents looking down on its facility will represent a threat to "national security."
Sanofi Pasteur is expanding its manufacturing facility, according to a letter from the company's lawyers. It'll be producing vaccines at the site, and will also be able to help fight any future global pandemics.
But the France-based company worries that two new towers proposed by the developer Tenblock — just a few hundred metres away, at 1875 Steeles Ave. W. — could jeopardize its security. Each tower would be more than 30 storeys high.
"The location of hundreds of new residential units with a 24/7 overlook of its sensitive facilities undermines Sanofi's ability to ensure its ongoing and expanding vaccine research and manufacturing facilities are secure," reads a letter from Sanofi's lawyers to city planners.
And that, the letter continues, "represents national security concerns given the strategic importance of the site for vaccine manufacturing and future pandemic readiness."
The condo residents will be able to look down at the plant’s roof. Perhaps they could record the licence plate numbers from the cars and trucks that enter the property. How can that affect national security?
Real estate company collapses, 500 homes affected, $10M from investors across Canada missing
CBC News 29 March 2022
Carolina Abramovich says the investment appealed to both her pocketbook and her conscience.
The Vancouver biomedical scientist is one of 120 investors who gave unsecured loans of between $50,000 and $500,000 to the Epic Alliance group of companies in Saskatoon.
"I heard about Epic Alliance with real estate investment groups, they were really everywhere," she said in an interview.
"Excellent reviews from anybody that invested with them, small or big. Real estate investment groups, podcasts, webinars — they were everywhere."
"The story behind the company was great. Try to help investors with their investments while providing, you know, affordable housing in Saskatoon. I liked the fact that they were women and that they were promoting trades for women."
The Epic Alliance group of companies shut down its operations at the end of January. Its investors and property partners learned of the collapse in a 16-minute Zoom call from the company's founders, Rochelle Laflamme and Alisa Thompson.
"Everything is gone. Everything is bankrupt, guys. It's all gone," Laflamme said in the Jan. 19, 2022, video.
People, living out of the province, bought homes that they did not see. They did not have an independent inspector look at the properties. But that wasn’t important because “the story behind the company was great”.
Unbelievable.
Toronto couple shocked when rent increases 25 per cent
CTV News 15 February 2022
There was a rent freeze in Ontario last year due to the pandemic, but it expired on Jan. 1 and now some landlords are raising rent by as much as 25 per cent.
The allowable rent control guideline increase for this year is 1.2 per cent, but that does not apply to newer buildings constructed after November 2018.
To encourage more rental housing and developments in the province, the Ontario government changed rent control guidelines so that new buildings would not have to adhere to rent controls.
The owners of these newer rental units couldn't raise rent last year due to the pandemic, but now they can.
"Rents have jumped dramatically and this has led to 25 per cent increases in a lot of places," said Mark Weisleder, a real estate expert and lawyer with RealEstateLawyers.ca LLP.
Weisleder said the new rules were to encourage development and, according to Ontario’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, new buildings and new basement apartments occupied for the first time for residential purposes after November 15, 2018 are exempt from rent control.
So if you are buying a condo unit as an investment, you may be better off buying a unit that was built after November 2018. If you want to rent a condo unit, you would be wise to rent an older unit.
If you think that's a problem than the way the NDP Party wrote the Strata Property Act there's going to be a more homelessness around the corner. The NDP government has written the SPA in such a way that they have protected ALL property management companies and their property managers from being held accountable for their actions.
Property Management Companies like AWM Alliance are colluding with Reserve Fund Advisors like NLD Consulting to prepare fake and fraudulent Deprecation Reports with no recourse. They are allowed to have the partners at NLD Consulting to hold associate brokerage licenses and not make that public knowledge.
The NDP government know this but have turned a blind eye to this crisis.
reader in BC
I am in Ontario so I am not familair with what is happening in BC but in my next three essays (starting next week) I will be writing about Reserve Fund Studies and the games that are played with them in Ontario.
—editor