2 Responses to Little owners can do to increase size of condo board

1. Golam says:

   February 24, 2011 at 5:05 pm

   I will let you know about my expe­ri­ence and what we are doing to improve the situation?

   Just to let every­one know that there are many issues in Condo’s and condo own­ers must work together to pro­tect their invest­ment. The cur­rent condo act was last revised in 1998 and since then over mil­lions of peo­ple have moved into the con­dos in Ontario. Many con­dos are age­ing and needs repair work. When city orders to fix some­thing in your condo then you have to carry on the repair. Regard­less if your condo have enough money in the reserve funds or not. If you don’t have enough money in the reserve then you will have to bor­row money from the bank. If the bank denies which hap­pened in our case then you will have to bor­row money from the loan sharks with high inter­est and which we did. The best solu­tion is to do an assess­ment and let the owner pay lump sum for cou­ple of years to pay for the repairs. Always, if you have to do any large repairs and don’t have enough money then spread the task over few years. Always always be self reliant and try not to bor­row. The worst case is to go with the loan sharks because you will be pay­ing inter­est for lot more years and which we did, lucky us. As you can see we have taken all the wrong steps. We were forced into this by our dys­func­tional board mem­bers and pre­vi­ous cor­rupt condo man­age­ment com­pany and condo own­ers who stays in sleep until it starts to hurt their pock­ets. We had to repair garage which was the high pri­or­ity task but our board and man­age­ment decides to repair any thing that came their way such as the bal­cony, ele­va­tor, exte­rior, car­pets and guess what it was replaced twice and the car­pet cost for 21 floors over 350 thou­sands, our bal­cony cost over 2.5 mil­lions, and garage work unfin­ished. All the work they have done was as huge mys­tery to us because we were never dis­closed any infor­ma­tion at that time about the com­pa­nies who were in the bid­ding process. Then we had to get another loan because first loan wasn’t enough to cover the cost. The first loan was com­pletely mis­man­aged by the board and the man­age­ment com­pany. The point I am try­ing to address is that cor­rupt man­age­ment will do any­thing to make money out of com­mis­sion and they will even forge prox­ies if they have to. In every con­tract, the man­age­ment com­pany is some how mak­ing profit. I won’t say all man­age­ment com­pa­nies are bad but there are some very bad ones.

   What to do for man­age­ment com­pany?
   Check if they are mem­bers of ACMO, check ref­er­ence from few con­dos, check they have lia­bil­ity insur­ance for over few mil­lions of dol­lars, cre­ate a bylaw where it says that if the man­age­ment spend over $5000 dol­lars they will need to inform the condo own­ers, and condo own­ers must be proac­tive. At the end the whole condo is your home not just the unit you own and you all must pro­tect it.

   What can condo own­ers do for board mem­bers?
   Have at least 5 board mem­bers not 3. Make sure these board mem­bers gets a week­end work­shop from CCI on how to act as a board mem­bers. Is because boards are vol­un­teer work don’t just give the respon­si­bil­ity to any one who hap­pens to own an unit. Make sure this board mem­bers that you are elect­ing have some skills and want to do this job. Ask the can­di­dates to present them self in front of the audi­ence and why they should be elected. Cre­ate a bylaw for the board-members so they hold meet­ing every other month to inform home­own­ers of what is going on in the build­ing. Any events the board-members have to inform the condo own­ers regard­less it’s a good news or bad news.

   What can you do to make sure the board-members are doing the job?
   Cre­ate a social com­mit­tee within your condo. Have you social com­mit­tee for­mally rec­og­nized by the board-members. Get your condo own­ers involve in activ­i­ties in social gath­er­ing and talk about issues. If you see some­thing rise up then for­ward them to the board-members. Be proac­tive. Don’t think, is because you bought a condo then you won’t have to cut grass any more.

   What steps we are tak­ing to bring our cor­po­ra­tion finan­cial health back to nor­mal?
   We hired a lawyer, fought with the board-members and appointed an admin­is­tra­tor. We have faced with many issues in the past and now we have an court appointed admin­is­tra­tor Jim Bezmer who is doing a fine job so far. One day he won’t be here after our cor­po­ra­tion finan­cial health becomes sta­ble and his­tory might repeat again. We are try­ing to change the condo act because the cur­rent condo act does not pro­tect the condo own­ers. It pro­tects the condo cor­po­ra­tion and board-members. When you have a dys­func­tional board-members and you try to remove them through req­ui­si­tion let­ters, some how you will be denied by your cor­po­ra­tion lawyer. At the end you will get frus­trated and hire a lawyer of your own. Your lawyer and cor­po­ra­tion lawyer will fight and depletes your and your cor­po­ra­tion resource. Who wins, the lawyers. We are try­ing to change all that, how? We are try­ing to pass bill 79 which is in it’s 3^rd read­ing. When that bill gets passed, you will have some­one to look up to when in trou­ble with your dys­func­tional board-members. We have done protest right on Queens park down­town Toronto to bring the bill 79 to this stage. Many con­dos are in or will be in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion as we were in. And we the condo own­ers must rise up to stop the bleed­ing. Call up your local City Coun­cil­lors, MP, MPPs, if you want to find out who to call in your area and what events are tak­ing place in order to pass bill 79 go to https://​www​.how​to​condo​.com/​l​o​g​i​n​.​p​h​p​?​i​n​f​o​_​e​v​e​n​t​s​=​T​RUE. Also we have under taken an ini­tia­tive to con­nect with other condo own­ers, who can share their expe­ri­ence in the condo net­work­ing site http://​www​.how​to​condo​.com. We want to pro­tect our invest­ment and we can do that only if there are laws to pro­tect them. We are vol­un­teer­ing the effort to inform other condo own­ers regard­ing the condo issues. Together we can fix them.

   How can you help?
   Call you local polit­i­cal lead­ers and tell them why they should sup­port this bill 79. Join our net­work at http://​www​.how​to​condo​.com so we the condo own­ers become stronger. Inform us regard­ing your condo expe­ri­ence and we will pro­vide you with advice, if not some one from the http://​www​.how​to​condo​.com will inform you. Don’t let any one take advan­tage of your invest­ment. Together we will make our gov­ern­ment lis­ten. http://​www​.how​to​condo​.com is ran by vol­un­teered condo own­ers and it’s free to use and not for profit site.

   At the end, I would like to reit­er­ate that I am not try­ing to scare any­one from buy­ing a condo but doing my role as an active mem­ber of the soci­ety that there are condo issues exist and we must fix it before it esca­late into some­thing worse. The condo is the most afford­able and log­i­cal invest­ment when you are plan­ning to live in the city. Be active, voice your con­cern, and pro­tect your investment.

   Thanks,
   Golam
   416 565 2130
   http://​www​.how​to​condo​.com
   howtocondo@gmail.com
   236 Albion Rd
   Eto­bi­coke Ontario
   Canada

   Reply
2. Reserve Fund Study says:

   January 6, 2010 at 9:26 pm

   I have heard of CAP but I haven’t dealt with them either. There are a few com­pa­nies that will review condo docs fro buy­ers. They can be a very good invest­ment for the future condo owner.

   I know how you feel about the dou­bling of condo fees. Spe­cial assess­ments seem to be pop­ping up a lot lately too. Buyer’s really need to be fully aware of the condo’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion before final­iz­ing their pur­chase or they could run into some really expen­sive suprises.

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