NorthYorkEd
Active Member
Let's hope so. It at least needs a good solid rest.
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The Condo Game [CBC Documentary]
- Thread starter Southcore
- Start date
Let's hope so. It at least needs a good solid rest.
TheKingEast
Senior Member
I have a feeling a lot of people who ought at the high point are going to be in big trouble. It's unfortunate.
js97
Senior Member
Yeah, when I was in the condo market in '06, I couldn't justify buying pre-construction. Not being able to 'see' a unit is like buying a car without a test drive, or an arranged marriage. This is no blind date, a 300k+ investment and you don't even get a first date?!
TheKingEast
Senior Member
You get a model suite, but we all know model suites can be far off from the finished product.
freshcutgrass
Senior Member
Well that's just it...there isn't a "high point'. Average prices per square foot have been rising, but they are slow and steady increases. There is no bubble, therefore no giant correction coming. Prices have been kept in check by heavy competition and lower margins (and yes, by cheap building practices too). It doesn't hurt that unemployment and interest rates remain low as well.
This is not 1989. The people who bought in 1989 were truly screwed.
I do not agree with the CBC doc where someone speculated that condo prices could be inflated by as much as 30%.
NorthYorkEd
Active Member
I'm not so sure that "it's different this time". If most of the units being purchased were purchased as homes and not as commodities only intended for a quick flip, easy profit, or as a sanctuary for offshore money, the market forces might be more justified in raising the prices. But I don't think we have seen true market forces; I think this rise in prices has been for the most part manipulated and artificial and unlike past cycles, has diverged radically from the pace of both inflation and incomes while total household debt increased more than at any other time in history. At some point, reality has to check in. Whether it will suddenly pop as a bubble (crash!) or slowly deflate like a balloon losing air (soft correction over several years) has yet to be seen. People are starting to feel it, as the retail decline and overall loss of enthusiasm for new housing projects shows.
freshcutgrass
Senior Member
It couldn't be more different.
SunriseChampion
Senior Member
Are you disagreeing with the widely held view that home prices are overvalued?
Just today Deutschebank released a report stating that home prices in Canada are overvalued by 60% vs incomes. The number may be debatable, but the idea surely isn't.
Just today Deutschebank released a report stating that home prices in Canada are overvalued by 60% vs incomes. The number may be debatable, but the idea surely isn't.
Bass gtr
New Member
She did not want to settle and move on, so yes, on this point I am blaming her. There are realities when you live in a condo, sure the legislation should be changed and condo boards have problems. But you have to wonder about someone so delusional that they would put their life on hold for 10 years and not take advice from their own lawyer. Now she risks getting nothing or at best the original settlement which she could have got 10 years ago.
Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
The best condos to live in are the converted apartment blocks in my opinion.
Both condos I've spent time in were converted condos, one from a post-war apartment block and one a converted office building. Both offered high ceilings, livable square footage, condo amenities, thick walls between units, working infrastructure, no shoddy construction/renovation problems, reasonable maintenance fee, etc. Plus both were small-midrises so the condo board was much easier to deal with. (though I rarely had a problem)
Condo Madness
New Member
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 board for oppression relief.
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 board for oppression relief.
Condo Madness
New Member
This type of issue is common in both new and older condos.
Lizthevw
New Member
Just watched part of the documentary, then it cut out on me.
My quick $0.02 (do I have to round up to a nickel nowadays? More likely down to $0).
Most new builds, whether suburban McMansions or the cheapest of condos, will have issues initially. A problem with the door handle, for instance, probably shouldn't happen, but happens all the time. Some guy probably got paid to run from room to room and unit to unit installing them as quickly as he could. Mistakes happen. I also have no concerns about the basic structural integrity of the buildings, unless you consider shattering glass structural, which it isn't.
My concern centers around the lifespan of components that are big ticket items on a condo tower. Not only does it get more expensive to replace roof, facades, and mechanicals the higher a tower is, but all of the components are exposed to far higher stresses with increasing height. That's ok, building science engineers (full disclosure, that's my background) can design for that. Inevitably, however, that costs money. If you are Brookfield Office Properties, you have a long time horizon and you make sure that you hire the best to design for height, you make sure that it is built the best, and installed in the best manner. If your skin in the game really only lasts as long as the homebuyers warranty, you have less incentive to do so, and a great big financial incentive not to.
Older condos tended to be built rather stoutly in terms of the building envelope, and many have weathered many years with reasonable building costs. A few have been so costly to repair that the buildings are quite "upside down" in terms of the vast sums they have spent on constant repairs. Sums exceeding the entire cost to build new. What I worry about is the quality of materials in some (not all) of the new condos popping up in Toronto. Building envelopes entirely of glass are fine, so long as the seals are fine. I consider these to have a relatively short lifespan ordinarily (typically 25 to 30 years), but I'm not entirely sure that some of the condos will see that lifespan without very significant water and thermal issues. For the pocketbooks of the owners, I certainly hope that I am wrong.
As to the value of the market, I am an avid investor and would love to hold Toronto condo properties, but subsidizing renters and potentially taking a significant capital loss doesn't really appeal.
My quick $0.02 (do I have to round up to a nickel nowadays? More likely down to $0).
Most new builds, whether suburban McMansions or the cheapest of condos, will have issues initially. A problem with the door handle, for instance, probably shouldn't happen, but happens all the time. Some guy probably got paid to run from room to room and unit to unit installing them as quickly as he could. Mistakes happen. I also have no concerns about the basic structural integrity of the buildings, unless you consider shattering glass structural, which it isn't.
My concern centers around the lifespan of components that are big ticket items on a condo tower. Not only does it get more expensive to replace roof, facades, and mechanicals the higher a tower is, but all of the components are exposed to far higher stresses with increasing height. That's ok, building science engineers (full disclosure, that's my background) can design for that. Inevitably, however, that costs money. If you are Brookfield Office Properties, you have a long time horizon and you make sure that you hire the best to design for height, you make sure that it is built the best, and installed in the best manner. If your skin in the game really only lasts as long as the homebuyers warranty, you have less incentive to do so, and a great big financial incentive not to.
Older condos tended to be built rather stoutly in terms of the building envelope, and many have weathered many years with reasonable building costs. A few have been so costly to repair that the buildings are quite "upside down" in terms of the vast sums they have spent on constant repairs. Sums exceeding the entire cost to build new. What I worry about is the quality of materials in some (not all) of the new condos popping up in Toronto. Building envelopes entirely of glass are fine, so long as the seals are fine. I consider these to have a relatively short lifespan ordinarily (typically 25 to 30 years), but I'm not entirely sure that some of the condos will see that lifespan without very significant water and thermal issues. For the pocketbooks of the owners, I certainly hope that I am wrong.
As to the value of the market, I am an avid investor and would love to hold Toronto condo properties, but subsidizing renters and potentially taking a significant capital loss doesn't really appeal.
Condo Madness
New Member
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 construction site will be something else again.
http://condomadness.info/madness-655-Bathgate.html
If the condo owners ignore maintenance, the costs skyrocket. No single newspaper article can explain all that went wrong or what other condo owners can do to protect themselves.
One thing I discovered; watch out for a condo that will renovate the lobby when serious building issues get pushed out into the future. The Marina Del Ray is not the only building where that happens.
That is one thing but the several years ahead of living in a construction site will be something else again.
http://condomadness.info/madness-655-Bathgate.html
If the condo owners ignore maintenance, the costs skyrocket. No single newspaper article can explain all that went wrong or what other condo owners can do to protect themselves.
One thing I discovered; watch out for a condo that will renovate the lobby when serious building issues get pushed out into the future. The Marina Del Ray is not the only building where that happens.
salsa
Senior Member
As someone with a building science background, I hope you know that glass is extremely energy inefficient, even if it's good quality.