Condo Club
Owner's and Experts Get Together to Talk Condominium
- by Debbie Elicksen
Betty's Condo Owners Club, the brainchild of Bernie Winter and Louise Challes of Condo-Check, held its first Condo Owners’ Forum on April 20, 2005 where an audience queried a panel of experts on condo-related issues.
| The club’s concept came out of Winter’s and Challes’s new book, 10 Secrets to Surviving Life in a Condominium: Live the dream, not the nightmare. The book follows the story of Betty and Bob as they journey through the experience of purchasing their first condominium. They discover there is more to owning a condominium than liking the unit and the location. At the Condo Owners’ Forum, Louise Challes of Condo-Check summed up one of the biggest overlooked factors to owning a condominium. “You are actually a business partner in the corporation. Like any business owner, you need to know how the corporation is doing.” That means reading the financial information regularly. |
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When it comes to insurance issues, there are two factors to look at: corporate and personal. The condominium association’s policy covers common areas, which may or may not include improvements to the original structure. Make sure you share the corporation’s insurance information with your personal carrier. “It’s one of the most affordable forms of insurance,” says Wendy Wildeman of Rogers Insurance. “Look at the policy en mass – as a family. “
Condominium bylaws are not cast in stone. “They didn’t get sent down by Moses,” reports Sandy Cameron, a lawyer with Cameron Horne Law Office LLP. “They’re an educational device. Treat them as procedural and educational. If you can’t understand them, it’s time to change them.”
Statutory provisions may be out of date. But be careful how you change the bylaws. You might have an unintended consequence if the same issue shows up later in the document.
Check how the corporation is governed. If the current direction is to have board members retire at the end of each year, owners might want to instill some continuity. The bylaws would have to be changed to allow for that. Keep in mind that any changes are not effective until the bylaws are filed with Land Titles. If they are not up to date, it won’t be an issue until someone challenges them.
Jim Warren, Vice President of Morrison Hershfield, defines a reserve fund as a fund of money, owned by a condominium, to pay for long term preservation, repair, and replacement of a condominium’s assets. Since September 1, 2000, the Condominium Property Act requires a mandatory reserve fund study for all condominium properties, regardless of size.
A reserve fund study is a technical audit of building components, assessment of life expectancy, planned replacements, and financial projections. Study estimates aren’t 100 percent accurate but there is some reasonableness to them. For example: a roof, expected to last 20 years, is maintained by recaulking, keeping drainage clear, and spot repairs. The risk and consequences of neglecting roof maintenance are water damage to interior finishes and property.
To learn more about Betty’s Condo Owners Club, check out www.condoownersclub.com.
- Thank you to Bernie Winter of Condo-Check Document Services
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