The province’s auditor general revealed that condominium industry of Ontario does not adequately protects condo owners. CondoBI investigated tendencies of GTA condominiums’ maintenance fees change for the first 3 years

This Toronto homeowner was shocked when her condo fees jumped over 30 per cent within two years. The province's auditor general wants better disclosure rules for developers
When Danila Zeneli saw the listing for what would be her first home in Toronto, the condo fees for the downtown one-bedroom were just $287.34 a month. But by 2017 when she moved in, those fees had already gone up.

Condo maintenance fees growth for the first 3 years after registration is a typical situation for many of Toronto condo owners. Taking into account that more than 50% population of Toronto lives in condominiums that problem became a community problem. That is why condo maintenance fees maters to CondoBI so much and our one of main goals are to collect, analyze and give condo owners the transparent information about current situation with maintenance fees, its tendencies and identify the best practice of the industry to implement for many of condominiums.

Based on the information available to public on such high – reputable realtors’ websites as www.strata.ca, www.condos.ca, CondoBI selected a sample of GTA’s condominiums registered within 2011-2017 years. Analyses (Graphs 1and 2) shown that:

31.92 % (or 98 buildings) increased maintenance fees by 10% – 20% for the first 3 years and

31.6 % (or 97 buildings) increased maintenance fees by 1% – 10 %.

7.82% (24 buildings) did not change maintenance fees and

10.4 % (32 buildings) even decreased maintenance fees what must be used as an example of the best practice for the rest of condominiums!

But at the same time

7.8% condominiums (24 buildings) increased maintenance fees by more than 30 %!

Structure of MF_increase 01_14_21
Infogram

The map below shows the buildings’ locations and the graphs 3 and 4 shows the list of the buildings, the maintenance fees growth percentage, maintenance fees of the 3rd year after registration and property management companies related to those buildings.

So, if you are a condo owner and your condominium is on the list of that buildings it must be the case for investigation the reason of such big increase (it might be a under assessed maintenance fees at the beginning, poor quality of building construction or inefficient financial management), searching some more information about similar buildings, management companies and implementation of benchmarking procedures.

The biggest_increase 01_14_21
Infogram

The information has been taken from publicly available resources “As Is” and we would greatly appreciate if you send us a notice in comments below finding errors on the page.