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Femtosecond posted:Not nearly enough people are talking about this time bomb Don't forget that many of the new condos have substandard workmanship due to the whole housing boom. Even worse many of them have buyer grabbing gimmicks such as rooftop pools and wall of glass window which will require expensive repairs further down the road.
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Jan 20, 2016 21:14
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Femtosecond posted:Not nearly enough people are talking about this time bomb This isn't just a new building problem. My strata was built in the 70's and the last year or two of AGM/SGMs you could feel the stress whenever the depreciation report is brought up. This is a gigantic problem that isn't going to get resolved until the province mandates a contingency %. The one silver lining, and the thing that potentially poisons the entire thing, is that the depreciation reports seem to be a bit overkill. For instance, iirc we have a million dollar line item in our for complete replacement of the stucco. That is just not something that is going to happen here unless something quite bad occurred which makes the lack of contingency pointless. This leads to the following observations: 1) The amount of under funding is probably not quite as bad as indicated, though that may be quibbling over how many bullets you have in your brain. 2) It becomes easy for dissenters to derail any increase due to how ridiculous the report appears. Last time this came up in my strata, to follow the report we would have had to increase fees by 25% just this year. With similar increases for the next 4-5 years. Instead we opted to study the report further, and basically punted on it, largely due to that one line item. I wish I could afford a SFH, mostly so I didn't need to rely on flippers and the fixed income olds to be responsible for my future maintenance. 
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Jan 20, 2016 21:25
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quote:Even worse many of them have buyer grabbing gimmicks such as rooftop pools and wall of glass window which will require expensive repairs further down the road. I drove by the opening construction of this awhile ago and out of curiosity looked it up online. It's by no means the worst offender in terms of glass nightmares but just amused me for some reason. "These elegant edifices of glass have been designed to mirror the many moods of the lake and sky." Marketing people are sociopaths. In 10 years their reserve fund will be nuked and the special assessments will start rolling.
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Jan 20, 2016 21:43
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vyelkin posted:It's okay guys the Bank of America says Canada is #1 in the world for "soundness of banks" so really, we're fine. I, too, am glad our financial institutions have such wonderful acoustics.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:04
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Yup, exactly. At least in the future you will be able to tell if your condo will be a guaranteed gigantic money pit disaster or not by looking at the depreciation report and confirming that the strata has adopted fees based on one of the funding models in the report. I think it's going to end up in two pretty distinct condo markets, pricier ones that have their poo poo together versus a lower selling price but a $50-100k special assessment landing at any moment. Right now it's just ugly while individual stratas pick which way they're leaning on this one / paying for all the maintenance previous owners shirked over the years.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:14
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sund posted:Yup, exactly. At least in the future you will be able to tell if your condo will be a guaranteed gigantic money pit disaster or not by looking at the depreciation report and confirming that the strata has adopted fees based on one of the funding models in the report. I think it's going to end up in two pretty distinct condo markets, pricier ones that have their poo poo together versus a lower selling price but a $50-100k special assessment landing at any moment. Right now it's just ugly while individual stratas pick which way they're leaning on this one / paying for all the maintenance previous owners shirked over the years. I like how everything with canadian bubble is based around the concept, I sure hope future people can pay everything off. Had a good laugh reading some earlier posts itt how just the wall of glass gimmick for condos will probably cost people 10-15k CAD in the near future since they have more problems and higher failure rates.
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Jan 21, 2016 00:05
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The Gunslinger posted:In 10 years their reserve fund will be nuked and the special assessments will start rolling. At which point you swoop in and establish yourself as a yuppie slumlord.
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Jan 21, 2016 00:19
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Also, if your condo strata fee needs money to do some sort of special assessment thing, you don't actually need to pay for it until you sell your condo. A woman my mom works with has a condo and they need to get the roof re-done or something I can't remember exactly what, but everyone had to pay $10k to get it done. Except that a bunch of the old people living there who didn't have 10k decided to defer the payment until they sold the property and use their profits from that to pay for it, which is apparently totally legal. Except the strata people didn't have enough money in their account to pay for the roof being fixed upfront, so they don't get to have their new roof done at all. Also $300 for strata fees being high is amazing to me. At my old place they were in the $500-$800 range, and I'm pretty sure in this complex they're around $500 and this is a complex with an unheated garage and no hallways or common areas (it's like an apartment building but all the apartments lead directly to the outside)
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Jan 21, 2016 00:28
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Wait till those unmaintained big glass facades start falling down onto the streets below :slayer:
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Jan 21, 2016 00:41
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Jumpingmanjim posted:Wait till those unmaintained big glass facades start falling down onto the streets below :slayer: This happens nearly weekly in Toronto.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:20
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Femtosecond posted:Not nearly enough people are talking about this time bomb Franks Happy Place posted:There is not a single condo in Greater Vancouver whose strata has been properly assessing future expenses and building a fund to match. If you don't believe me, all you need to do is look at why the government changed the rules for mandatory depreciation reports to force them to confront the matter. And of course they can still ignore those reports with a 3/4ths vote, so nothing has changed. If you want to count on your piddly $300 a month covering something like a new roof when all it can do is barely keep up with elevator servicing and the gardener and somebody to hose out the parkade once a year, you're loving delusional. This is not a new problem, unfortunately. Everyone has known this is a huge issue and has known for a long, long time. Government and the real estate industry are just punting on the matter out of sheer self-interest and shortsighted greed, and I doubt that changes before the bubble pops.
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Jan 21, 2016 06:05
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Condo owners are so cheap it's unreal. Some plants died in my building because, shocking news: plants are alive, have a limited lifespan and can die of disease. Strata council got sticker shock at the price of landscaping and started musing about replacing everything with rocks. Who the hell wants to have a patio area with planters full of rocks?
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Jan 21, 2016 06:59
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The guy drinking a beer not mowing the lawn
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Jan 21, 2016 07:02
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Jumpingmanjim posted:Wait till those unmaintained big glass facades start falling down onto the streets below :slayer: Even if they don't fall down they have a shorter time to failure vs older windows plus sky high replacement costs. It's another lovely gimmick gullible buyers like a roof pool that will lead to big strata fees in the future.
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Jan 21, 2016 07:38
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etalian posted:Even if they don't fall down they have a shorter time to failure vs older windows plus sky high replacement costs. They spend the strata fees plastering every downtown SkyTrain station with ads for their Glass Bottomed Pool 200ft in the Sky~ Though I would laugh at the news of a giant glass pool dropping onto Cambie street, causing chaos. less than three fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 21, 2016 08:21
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Femtosecond posted:The BC government needs to step in and regulate the amount of contingency funds that must be kept. Simply requiring a depreciation report to be made isn’t enough, because buildings get a depreciation report, then put it on the shelf and ignore it because it’s politically impossible to follow the report guidelines by increasing monthly fees. My building has voted against doing the depreciation report every year since it was made mandatory. This doesn't seem legal but that's what's happening. We've actually been doing major repairs too. Still need at least a new roof though.
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Jan 21, 2016 12:23
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Reverse Centaur posted:My building has voted against doing the depreciation report every year since it was made mandatory. This doesn't seem legal but that's what's happening. I hope your unit has a for sale sign on it. At this point if you aren't looking for a way off that sinking ship I highly suggest you start.
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Jan 21, 2016 19:21
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EvilJoven posted:I hope your unit has a for sale sign on it. At this point if you aren't looking for a way off that sinking ship I highly suggest you start. They are all like that, so there is little chance of a better situation. I want to get out of my unit too, but Vancouver's insanity has already locked me here for ten years longer than I anticipated.
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Jan 21, 2016 19:30
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How are you locked? Sell?
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Jan 21, 2016 19:33
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Sell. Then rent. Hell, sell your condo to an investor and then rent from them.
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Jan 21, 2016 19:38
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Condo for sale! Great investment opportunity! I can even find a tenant for you (for a small finders fee)!
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Jan 21, 2016 19:40
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Mantle posted:How are you locked? Sell? Haha, it must be nice to be in complete rational control of your housing situation. Dropping my potentially poorly maintained townhouse that I have 1/100 say over, for a probably pooly maintained townhouse with no say over it is hardly an improvement. (Our maintenance situation isn't as bad as it could be, but it could be better.) Also I don't feel like getting a divorce over it.
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Jan 21, 2016 23:00
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Being on the same page about finances is about as important if not more important that thoughts on children, or religion, or what ever other major deal breakers people have. So many people don't talk about it though.
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Jan 21, 2016 23:03
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As someone who is literally sitting in a bank right now listening to a guy talking to my wife about our mortgage application approval I know what it's like to sometimes make a less than optimal decision to make the better half happy. At least the house were probably going to buy isn't terribly overpriced. Under 200K for a place with a big rear end basement with 7' ceilings. 
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Jan 21, 2016 23:54
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200k for a house? You're golden.
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Jan 22, 2016 00:09
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Yeah if I could buy a house for 200k I definitely would.
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Jan 22, 2016 01:51
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HookShot posted:Yeah if I could buy a house for 200k I definitely would. I like how this thread is so against home ownership, and then the minute someone points out a place that isn't in the midst of a horrible housing bubble, all the negatives everyone's listed seem to evaporate as if by magic! It's almost like the main problem is the housing bubbles themselves, not ownership... EDIT: Just to be clear, I agree that home ownership is often a good choice in a market where houses are fairly priced. I just find it hilarious that no one brings up the maintenance costs, lack of liquidity and/or flexibility, finance charges, etc. as if those are only present in overheated markets.
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Jan 22, 2016 01:57
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EvilJoven posted:As someone who is literally sitting in a bank right now listening to a guy talking to my wife about our mortgage application approval I know what it's like to sometimes make a less than optimal decision to make the better half happy. You probably should be paying more attention to the conversation instead of posting on Something Awful while you and your partner are in the middle of making a major financial decision. 
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Jan 22, 2016 01:58
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Well, MY WIFE and I bought our house for 210K about 8 years ago, so just before the last crash, have the mortgage down to 106K. I couldn't rent anything near as nice as what I got for near the mortgage, but not including the bills. But I don't look at it as an investment, I look at it as a place to live.
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Jan 22, 2016 02:03
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PT6A posted:I like how this thread is so against home ownership, and then the minute someone points out a place that isn't in the midst of a horrible housing bubble, all the negatives everyone's listed seem to evaporate as if by magic! It's almost like the main problem is the housing bubbles themselves, not ownership... Well it's more that at 200k I can afford to pay for the mortgage and all those extra costs, without having to go through the hassles of renting, which do exist, in a town where I want to settle for good. In an overheated market those costs still exist, but they take the cost of ownership way, way past anything remotely reasonable. I could easily afford a mortgage payment here right now. It the extras that take it out of my price range (for anything I'd actually want to buy, anyway).
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Jan 22, 2016 02:24
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PT6A posted:I like how this thread is so against home ownership, and then the minute someone points out a place that isn't in the midst of a horrible housing bubble, all the negatives everyone's listed seem to evaporate as if by magic! It's almost like the main problem is the housing bubbles themselves, not ownership... Those negatives are almost always brought up in the context of someone comparing the monthly payments between a mortgage and a rental and using the similarity of the two to justify buying a place (same in the BFC house buying thread). Someone discounting those negatives during a historically regular housing market are being financially stupid. The bubble exacerbates the problem by causing people to think other stupid thoughts like "I'll be priced out!" and it also stretches people's budgets for buying to the point where wishful stupidity about the costs of ownership become more appealing, but the bubble is not the root cause, ordinary ignorance and stupidity are.
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Jan 22, 2016 04:14
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In that case, we can sum this thread up as: it's stupid to buy an overpriced asset. Let's pack 'er up, guys! It's been a good run.
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Jan 22, 2016 04:25
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EvilJoven posted:I hope your unit has a for sale sign on it. At this point if you aren't looking for a way off that sinking ship I highly suggest you start. Just like you I have to consider my wife's feelings. She was offered an amazing job while applying for New Zealand citizenship... we were so close to getting out.  Everything rebounded for her while my life has gone to poo poo. My health and career have fallen apart, I'm looking at lower pay and a long commute across Burrard inlet again, and I would love to get out of this city/country. Also I just had a discussion with my mom where she compared my view on foreign real estate "investment" to Trump's views on Mexicans and ISIS's views on everyone not ISIS. I guess becoming a multi-millionaire thanks to them makes it easy to throw around racism accusations at those of us who can no longer get by.
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Jan 22, 2016 05:10
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SpannerX posted:Well, MY WIFE and I bought our house for 210K about 8 years ago, so just before the last crash, have the mortgage down to 106K. I couldn't rent anything near as nice as what I got for near the mortgage, but not including the bills. But I don't look at it as an investment, I look at it as a place to live. The most fundamental thing to look for rent vs buy in monthly cost. Due to the housing craze people are getting condos, even though the end month cost with all the various extras such as strata fee is $1000-$2000 above renting.
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Jan 22, 2016 07:09
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PT6A posted:In that case, we can sum this thread up as: it's stupid to buy an overpriced asset. Now if only we could spread this same message of love to the rest of the country....
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Jan 22, 2016 07:20
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2 hours till C.I returns  quote:
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2016/01/19/budweiser-ignores-richmonds-chinese-sign-standard/
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Jan 22, 2016 07:30
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#AnglophonieSoFragile
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Jan 22, 2016 07:51
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https://www.biv.com/article/2016/1/vancouver-needs-grow-taller-towers-developer/quote:
Guys, Vancouver is world class
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Jan 22, 2016 16:08
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Honestly, after living in Montreal for years and putting up with their bullshit, I want anyone who advocates for "50% Any Language" laws to be publicly whipped and then launched into the sun. It's a lovely idea when Quebecers do it, and it's an equally lovely idea when everyone else does it. Don't like the sign? Don't look at it.
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Jan 22, 2016 16:10
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Jumpingmanjim posted:2 hours till C.I returns Stalker Cultural Imperial posted:https://www.biv.com/article/2016/1/vancouver-needs-grow-taller-towers-developer/ And so it begins
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Jan 22, 2016 16:36
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