In a recent blog post, personal finance diva Gail Vaz-Oxlade reminds homeowners of the need to budget for home maintenance items and be ready for big costs that can arise.   Good advice.

Condominium corporations typically prepare their annual budgets with reference to the reserve fund study ("RFS") mandated by section 94 of the Condominium Act.  The RFS helps ensure adequate funding for the major repair and replacement of common elements.    The Act requires that the RFS contain both a physical analysis of building components (including a component inventory with estimated remaining lifespan for each item) and a financial analysis as to the various costs of each item and a plan for the future funding of the reserve.    

The reserve fund study does not, however, provide much guidance about routine maintenance, which leaves condo boards to make their own judgement calls and to pay the cost for such work out of the operating account.   As a result, it becomes easy to justify putting off expenditures for routine maintenance when times are tough or the budget is tight.  

While deferring simple maintenance might seem like a good short-term solution, that approach may be more costly in the long run.

While her comments were probably directed to owners of freehold houses, Gail says the following which is directly applicable to condo complexes of any description:

"You can skimp on your home maintenance, ignoring the cracking foundation, the rotting deck or the fence that’s falling down only so long. When it finally MUST be done, no doubt it’ll cost three to five times as much as it would have if you’d simply maintained it."

With the good weather soon upon us, condo boards and their managers should inspect their common elements from top to bottom and work with their engineers and contractors to identify components that require preventative work this season.

The following guest entry by local condo director Ernie Nyitrai is a call to action for other condo corporations and unit owners to lobby for amendment to the Assessment Act, which governs the municipal tax assessment regime in Ontario.  

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Condominiums, even though they have been around for quite some time in Ontario, have only modestly grown in the past and mostly only in urban areas. However, all that started to change in the late 1980’s when growth in condominium development began to expand. This growth increase almost seemed to double each year. In fact, in many urban areas, especially in the Greater Toronto Area, they have almost come to supplant single-family residences as the preferred form of residential accommodation. MacLeans magazine, in its December 31, 2007 issue, featuring real estate in Canada, postulated that half the people in urban Canada will be living in condos by 2025. 

This growth has led many urban municipalities to allocate an ever-increasingly larger proportion of residential building permits to condominium development. Since condominium developments, specifically high-rise condominiums, utilize less land area, they have also become an excellent planning tool for the urban municipality, enabling them to accommodate more people in a smaller land area.

Although this growth in condominium developments has increased, almost exponentially in recent times, one aspect of condominium life has not changed, namely assessment on condos for the purpose of municipal taxes.

Continue Reading Guest post: Condominiums and municipal taxation

Now that most condo corporations in the Greater Toronto Area are paying for garbage disposal on the basis of volume or weight, it is increasingly important to divert heavy, bulky and recyclable items from the regular garbage stream.   Electronic waste (or "e-waste") is a big issue.

A recent story in the Toronto Star summarizes a number of new options for the proper disposal of e-waste such as computers, printers and televisions.   Check out the story here.

Then consider things that you can do at your condominium:

  1. Organize a special day to collect and dispose of e-waste for your residents.
  2. Spread information about new municipal and provincial initiatives and how owners can use them to safely dispose of unwanted electronics.
  3. Let owners know the cost of garbage collection and encourage responsible disposal to help minimize these growing costs.

Not only does diverting e-waste help your condo corporation’s bottom line, it helps protect the environment by keeping heavy metal and toxic waste out of our landfills and allows those components to be recycled.

The proposed Green Energy Act (“GEA”) is moving forward quickly and will be considered in committee later this month. As it now reads, nothing in the GEA contemplates any amendment to the Condominium Act, 1998 (“the Condo Act”).

That may change, but not in a way we would like.

The Toronto Atmospheric Fund (“TAF”), together with a local condo developer and their respective lawyers, made a written submission to the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure on the implementation of the GEA. A copy of the submission is available here. [Hat tip to environmental law blogger Dianne Saxe.]

Continue Reading City and condo developer suggest amending Condo Act for green reasons

Earlier this year the New York Times featured an article about miniature horses replacing guide dogs as “service animals” for people with certain types of disabilities.  (Hat tip to Daniel Zimberoff of the Northwest Condo & HOA Law Blog for passing it along.)  The article thoroughly discussed the several different types of service animals and the definition briefly and generally described the history of service animals:

“… [F]irst it was guide dogs for the blind; now it’s monkeys for quadriplegia and agoraphobia, guide miniature horses, a goat for muscular dystrophy, a parrot for psychosis and any number of animals for anxiety, including cats, ferrets, pigs, at least one iguana and a duck. They’re all showing up in stores and in restaurants, which is perfectly legal because the Americans With Disabilities Act (A.D.A.) requires that service animals be allowed wherever their owners want to go. …”

This New York Times article is of particular interest in light of the new Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (“AODA”), which came into force on January 1, 2008 and which affects most condos as private sector organizations that provide goods and services. The purpose of the AODA is described as follows at section 1:

Recognizing the history of discrimination against persons with disabilities in Ontario, the purpose of this Act is to benefit all Ontarians by,

(a) developing, implementing and enforcing accessibility standards in order to achieve accessibility for Ontarians with disabilities with respect to goods, services, facilities, accommodation, employment, buildings, structures and premises on or before January 1, 2025; and

(b) providing for the involvement of persons with disabilities, of the Government of Ontario and of representatives of industries and of various sectors of the economy in the development of the accessibility standards.

Section 9 of the AODA’s Regulation 427/07 establishes accessibility standards for customer service and prescribes the following criteria as to whether an animal is properly qualified as a service animal:

(a) if it is readily apparent that the animal is used by the person for reasons relating to his or her disability; or

(b) if the person provides a letter from a physician or nurse confirming that the person requires the animal for reasons relating to the disability.

Continue Reading Miniature horses and the duty to accommodate

The latest edition of Gardiner Miller Arnold’s Condo Alert! newsletter is now available online. 

Topics include:

  • Residential condo purchases commercial hotel operation
  • Customer service standard imposes accessibility requirements
  • Electronic status certificates
  • Privacy Commissioner on the examination of condo records
  • Signing condo service contracts
  • GMA firm news

Click here to view the newsletter.

Residential property owners thinking about appealing their 2009 property tax assessment must file a Request for Reconsideration ("RfR") by March 31.  

Don’t wait until the last minute to take steps — Property owners will need to read up on the changes in force this year and may need to get assistance.

For a handy summary of some of the changes and important dates, see the bulletin prepared this month by the municipal law group at Faskens in Toronto.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, a condo corporation can bring a single appeal on behalf of all of its unit owners if there is an appropriate by-law in place.   If your corporation does not have such a by-law, take steps to enact one before the next assessment period in 2012.

In December 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada released written reasons for its ruling in the landmark case of BCE Inc. v. 1976 Debentureholders, 2008 SCC 69 (CanLII).  This important case discusses directors’ duties and the application of the oppression remedy in business corporation law. Because these business law concepts are applicable to condominium law, the Court’s decision in the BCE case contains important lessons for condominium directors.

Continue Reading The Supreme Court on directors’ fiduciary duty

One of the most common issues arising from people living in close quarters is the transmission of sound and noise.  At what point noise becomes a prohibited nuisance is one of the questions that plagues every condominium board and manager, and the answer varies from case to case and depends entirely on the circumstances.

It may sometimes be helpful to approach noise cases from a different angle.

Lawyer Dianne Saxe has written a short blog entry highlighting some of the issues in regulating noise through environmental law statutes and municipal by-laws.  The piece is of interest to condominium professionals since it is written from an environmental law perspective and cites evidence that "environmental noise" is harmful to health.  Links are provided to a number of resources that aren’t often consulted in condo noise disputes.  

This short article may be of interest to anyone confronting the issue of noise and nuisance in condo settings or otherwise.  Read it here.

During this spell of cold weather and economic turbulence, small problems can turn into large disputes very quickly, giving rise to division in the community and unnecessary costs.

Attorney Beth Grimm of the California Condo & HOA Law Blog shares some welcome wisdom on how condo directors can approach potential problems to find quick solutions.   She suggests a number of creative approaches to take and a few to avoid at all costs.

Read her entry here and warm yourself with the thought of California sunshine.