Quote:
Originally Posted by cairnstone
And the council is a new Canadian, a teacher, a lawyer, a call center worker etc. And they have no clue about how a building works. The strata property manager is a new Canadian with only one qualification is that she can use most of Office. SO owners don't get a clear picture of the strata condition. I sat on a council and every meeting was a battle. And also ran across the same issue with so many management companies.
One of the major causes of leaky condos was the strata's themselves. Most had turned off the HVAC units in common areas. They are an essential part of the building envelope, by pressurizing the hallways they remove the moisture rich stail air in the units passively through bathroom vents and range hoods.
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Seriously they turned off the positive pressure system? Dumbasses.
A lot of units report leaks when they are actually just suffering from condensation.
A large problem here is that everything rises faster than inflation except the rent you can charge the tenant. So of course every owner doesn't want to face larger maintenance fee increases because they can't pass them on to the tenants.
And btw a property manager is slightly more educated than a McDonalds worker. You have vast gaps between experience levels of managers, no one wants to do it so the only ones who are any good tend to be much older ones who were unable to switch industries. However, they tend to lack enthusiasm/energy for the job.
Property managers deal with budgets in the 100's of thousands, some over a million. And they then do that for anywhere from 10-30 buildings. All with 2 months of education and lower pay than a skytrain attendant combined with 3 night meetings a week so your working about 50 hour workweeks plus your on call for emergencies. Its a industry in desperate need for revision but its been ignored because under the real estate council realtors makeup over 90% of licensees. Also no one wants to tell condo owners that they need to pay their property managers more and treat them like human beings.
Check out all the crap Pacific Quorum managers have had to deal with. Your treated like a lawyer/doctor with regards to your legal liability but paid crap and work crap hours. You also are required to follow huge books of conflicting rules you learned in 2 months online.
http://www.stratawatch.ca/directory/411/X026846.html
Or checkout the nice reviews people leave, why would you want to work a low paying job where you work more than 40 hours a week, get sued often, and just get grief.
https://www.yelp.ca/biz/pacific-quor...es-vancouver-2
Quote:
Originally Posted by rofina
This post was made on December 5th, close enough to start of the month.
The increase in sales for December, YoY, was 88%.
Does it really seem like this change chilled the market?
Beware of people trying to peddle propaganda, on both sides of the fence.
There definitely is a cohort of "its always a good time to buy" people.
Neither view should ever be absolute, recognise changing conditions and make decisions accordingly.
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Lol I know I'm told I'm on the other side of the fence but realistically even I'll admit at this time you'd be insane to buy a place to rent out, a luxury condo, or a house. The only thing that may be a decent investment is a really cheap condo simply because of supply and demand, we have few cheap condos but a whole lot of demand for them. The bottom of the market is moving up fast and the gap between cheap and expensive is slimming. Commercial office/industrial sales are pretty good, I suspect industrial and office will just keep going up. Land sales are way down as is multi-tenant. Hotels are probably a good investment. I suspect there's a decent chances houses may still go down a bit overall, I think the bottom houses will go up while the top still goes down some.
Now is a really really really bad time to be looking for a rental condo though, supply is going to dry up. Who wants to own a rental when insurance is skyrocketing and you can't pass on costs to your tenant.
I doubt they will do it but the NDP knows damn well that we need to at least allow inflation+1% rental increases. They are throwing homeowners under the bus along with potential new renters. Who wants to bet that somehow "greedy homeowners, foreigners, and money launderers" somehow gets blamed when our "rental crisis" becomes a "rental catastrophe".