Quote:
Originally Posted by speedog
No, I'd say it's somewhat different - as a SFH owner, I am keenly aware of everything that might need attention in my home but as a condo owner, I do not necessarily believe that I may have the knowledge necessary to determine if the parkade has issues or some other thing like a boiler, etc.. Yes, there should be a responsible board in place with regularly scheduled inspections that can be reported on but when I look at the Edmonton example suburbia just provided, I can 100% safely say that I've never had an unexpected maintenance bill due within a month or less that might equate to maybe 10-15% of my property's value and in fact, I haven't ever had anything remotely close to what these Edmonton people are facing in the 19 years that I've owned and lived in my current home.
|
If you've gone through the process of buying a condo you would know. As a SFH owner your focus is SFH issues and so you know about them. That is very natural.
If you own a condo you don't have to be an expert at anything. There is something called an engineering report, which outlines life cycle of major components and the current state of things. This report is done routinely and outlines infrastructure replacement schedules.
At the same time, there is something called a reserve fund study which matches items from the engineering report and upcoming maintenance items with the current state of the financials of the condo organization.
It is quite simple to put them together to get a picture of the finances and obligations you'll have as a condo owner and the state of the organizations financials. If you don't understand it, there are condo documentation review companies who can walk you through it for about the price of a home inspection.
You wouldn't know any of this if you aren't actively involved in condo ownership. That's very natural.
The important thing is that suburbia's article explicitly mentions that the board was collecting less condo fees than it should have been to cover these maintenance items. That means each owner was keeping more money in their pockets every month for maintenance. It was their choice to do that, but by doing that they get a big bill later several years down the line.
Another thing to realize is that these things are pretty obvious from the condo docs you get when reviewing a property to buy. If there is a large special assessment potentially looming, chances are you are going to buy that property for several tens of thousand dollars under market value, which covers the cost of the special assessment.
It's all about doing due diligence when buying a home. If you skip the home inspection when buying a SFH and then your pipes burst causing 6 figures worth of damages, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Prev
Linear Mode
