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The Condo Chronicles beginning October, 2010. More to come!
Please check back soon for updates.
Update Nov. 5/10: Vancouver City Council picked Co-operative Housing Federation of BC to establish a non-profit housing co-op in one of the City's three housing units and manage two other City housing properties in the former Olympic Village in Southeast False Creek. A housing co-op sponsored by the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC (CHF BC) will operate the five-storey, 84-unit building at 151 West 1st Ave. through a 60-year pre-paid lease. COHO Management Services Society, a management arm of CHF BC, will operate the City's buildings at 80 Walter Hardwick Ave. and 122 Walter Hardwick Ave. under a two-year management contract. Special priority for certain highly-paid union workers, who could afford to live just about anywhere! Mixed-income tenants will be individuals and families from the City's waiting list of priority workers (emergency services, public health and public education) currently at 250 names, BC Housing's Housing Registry (currently about 3,000 names for Vancouver) and finally from the general public.
Several pre-sale buyers of condominiums at the city-financed Olympic Athletes' Village site on Vancouver's False Creek don't
like their new homes and want to back out of their deals ... A lawyer representing 11 buyers said the City of Vancouver - which had to
step in to finance the project when the original developer ran out of money - has not delivered on what was promised for the
condominium units.
"They've lost faith in the developer," said Bryan Baynham. "They've lost faith in the city. Give us our money back and sell them
to someone else who wants to live there. My people don't want to live there."
The buyers are unhappy that there's a parking lot where there was supposed to be a park, that washers and dryers have not been
installed in their units and that their $5,000 fireplaces are defective, said Baynham. He said the buyers wonder what else might be
wrong. The alleged deficiencies amount to a breach of contract, said Baynham, and his clients want their deposits back, with
interest. ...
'... a billion-dollar boondoggle' - Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, July 21/09
The City of Vancouver stepped in to finance the Millennium Water condo project when the Millennium Development Corp. could no
longer get financing. (From 11 Olympic Village condo buyers want out, June 24/10, cbc.a, accessed online Oct. 18/10. By
Sept. 2/10, the number of buyers hoping to bail had climbed to 13!)
Bob Rennie of Rennie Marketing contemplates absorbing some costs - such as the HST or a couple of years' maintenance fees -
to lower the prices at Millennium, which the former Olympic Village is now called.
"We are going to announce those incentives mid-September," Rennie told CBC News on Wednesday. Rennie has a reputation as a highly
successful condo salesman in Vancouver. He has his work cut out for him at the development, which had hoped to cash in on its role
housing athletes during the Vancouver Olympics.
Millennium sales have been slower than expected. Hundreds of high-end condominium units are unoccupied and some commercial and retail space
is unleased. To date, 254 condo units have been sold, and 483 remain. A sales drive that began in May has a goal of selling 40
condominiums by the end of September, but only 26 have been sold so far. (From Olympic Village condos slow to sell, Sept. 2/10,
cbc.ca, accessed online Oct. 18/10)
Millennium Water Condo Development: You may not have to close
If you are a pre-sale purchaser in the controversial and financially-plagued Millenium Water Condo Development ("Millennium") and
are being pressured to close, you might want to consider ...
Was there adequate disclosure?
The development did not proceed as planned for Millennium, the City of Vancouver, or the pre-sale purchasers. The Real Estate
Development Marketing Act (REDMA) provides that anyone who owns, leases or has a right to sell a development is a developer. Since the
City still owns the property and the Millennium parent company leased the whole development from the City, it may be that they are
"Developers" under the REDMA. If there was not adequate disclosure, you may have a right of rescission and/or Millennium may not be able
to enforce the Contract of Purchase and Sale and require you to close. ...
Misrepresentations
Did the representations made by the developer to you personally turn out to be true? What were you told about the development/your
unit? What did you understand, if anything, about units being set aside for social/subsidized housing? What were you told about parks,
green space, adjacent developments? ... Your deposit remains in trust and cannot be released to the developer without your consent or
a court order. If you do not complete, the developer/the City will sell your unit and seek the difference from you, which could be
significantly more than your deposit. Put another way, the amount you have at risk is the difference between your purchase price and
the price for which the unit is ultimately sold. The developer can also claim interest from the closing date, strata fees to the date
of the sale, real estate commissions, legal fees and Court costs. ... (From What's New, Condo Pre-Sale Disputes, Harper Grey,
June 8/10, accessed online Oct. 18/10)
"... As the site of the Olympic Village, the world also embraced Millennium Water. There is nothing else in Vancouver - or on the
planet - like this," boasts the ad copy. "Not only is it the Olympic Village, it's a LEED Platinum green community." And in case
anyone wondered whose interests civic planning officials represent, get this: "Brent Toderian, Director of Planning for the City
of Vancouver, has said, 'SEFC (Southease False Creek) and the Olympic Village establish a new model for Vancouverism .... (mixing)
sustainability, urbanism, livability and vibrancy ...." ad nauseam.
Sustainability? What is the city putting in its water jug these days? Who's he kidding? What's more sustainable about
B.C. housing than 'leaky condo syndrome'? And why should buyers trust local building mo'feshnuls with complex, new so-called
'green' technologies when they have failed so often to meet the most basic obligation, which is to keep the rain out of the
premises for at least a generation?
Just look at the scary mix of inmates with wildly conflicting property interests sharing digs and in such an experimental
development! How motivated would the average social housing tenant be to participate or contribute in any way toward
the onerous property maintenance obligations no doubt required to protect condo owners' respective investments?
Consider:
Shout hallelujah, come on, get happy. Get ready for the judgment day!
Sales figures to date are not encouraging. More than half of the unsold units are priced above $1 million. Only 35 per cent of the
units purchased are done deals, and many would-be buyers who paid deposits in the pre-sale phase are demanding their money back,
complaining of shoddy workmanship, unappealing architecture and the absence of promised amenities, such as shopping, schools and green
space.
Now, the city is vowing to manage the social housing units and find an operator on its own after the provincial government deemed
all the applicants unsuitable to operate the project. Taxpayers will be on the hook for another $46 million if Robertson goes down this
road.
About 40 per cent of the rental units sit empty. That puts the kibosh to a plan that calls for units to be rented out to cover the
cost of debt service. In any case, the rents would have to be well in excess of market rates for the numbers to work. The alternative is
that taxpayers would subsidize lower rents for many years to come.
If Millennium fails to sell out the project, it will be unable to repay the $560 million it still owes the city, leaving taxpayers
liable for the entire amount. (From Social housing at Millennium Water by Harvey Enchin, The Vancouver Sun, Oct. 5/10)
We'll continue to follow this story and the lawsuit. Please check back for updates.
The Owner's Guide to B.C. Condominiums - 2010 with annual updates.
More about the report, including the Table of Contents.
Submit a condo inquiry.
A 21-page report by Leo Biblitz, LLB, representing more than seven years' moderating the non-profit consumer advocacy site,
www.bccondos.ca, to give prospective condo buyers everywhere all the information we wish we would have had when Biblitz bought his own leaky condo in Kitsilano in the
early '90s! What every buyer entering the shark-infested condo market should know about maintenance, interpreting
strata records and, most important, other owners. Although it's aimed primarily at B.C., the report provides a framework the prudent consumer may apply to assess condo legislation,
rules and construction issues in just about any jurisdiction where there are condos! This report will show readers where there are often gaps in strata records and sellers' representations. At the very least, you'll
know what questions to ask to ensure the price adequately reflects buyer's risk.
The report is available for sale as a pdf at a price of $25 (twenty-five Canadian dollars). Download the report as soon as you
complete the easy, secure PayPal payment process. It's that simple!
The report is intended for individual use only. Distribution/republication is prohibited; however, pricing for distribution of
the report to a wider audience, such as a strata corporation, is also available from the Webmaster. Please send inquiries to
dennis_boyko@yahoo.ca. By clicking on the PayPal
Buy Now icon below, you are agreeing to these terms.
Rennie's videomercial (left), which lists prices for these close-quartered, claustrophobic rabbit-hutches at $450K to an eye-popping $6 mil - for a teeny-tiny apartment built with a lot untested construction materials and technologies and managed according to a quasi-communistic legislative scheme that requires owners to negotiate repair/maintenance with one another, expensive experts, forsooth!
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