I’ve written a number of times about a property that I own in College Park on Toronto’s Bay Corridor just north of the Financial District.
We keep it as an investment property that we ended up living in for the past couple years because of our constant disappointment with a number of luxury condo units that we tried to enjoy.
And even to be able to do that we had to install sound attenuating walls over the drywall that the Developer (Canderal Stoneridge) stuck onto the concrete!
They had even forgot to insulate under these townhouses and only following a fight with me, a rather public one, did they come back to remedy the deficiency only to door a consistently poor job of remedying the deficiency!
I’ve made no bones over the years about not recommending buying in Canderal Developments. The most disappointing thing, after such a great career is to realize that developers of this calibre are much more the norm than are they the exception in Condoland.
The bottom line, whether we bought our first property, a one plus den on St. Clair Avenue in Toronto’s Forest Hill neighbourhood at $250,000 or $650,000 just down the street, or our $1.35 Million investment in my third and last Forest Hill attempt, each and every one of them proved to be so deficient and flawed that I ended up getting rid of them.
They were all so bad that I wasn’t even able to keep them as rental properties!
The nightmare that is Condoland is very personal as all units are purchased by individual consumers.
It is insulting and disgusting to have so many consumers, who are believing that they are being protected under the law from being exploited, be so flagrantly ripped off!
I fought, for up to a year with one very talented litigator whom I got to admire for his skill for distorting the facts to continually support his client’s (the developer) insistence on not remedying the obvious deficiency.
And then when I hammered them into a “Settlement” (achievable only for those who have more money than brains to try to fight these guys or for those of us who defend ourselves when frivolously threatened with law suits alleging Slander.
In the highly unlikely case that you can prevail, the best you will end up with is a “Settlement” which always brings the “condition of confidentiality” which basically means that regardless of how egregious and/or offensive their conduct and behaviour, it will all be buried to never see the light of day again.
Why, because other consumers may see how insulting the entire process is and stop buying their garbage that they’ve been allowed to advertise and promote as “world class product”!
Condoland’s “product” those glass and cement towers that form our ever changing skyline are basically problems, serious problems in the making.
Problems that no-one will have the remedy to. It’s destruction by design.
I wrote earlier about the construction flaws that are being “allowed” and which are “built in” to residential condo towers.
I have photographs of built-in construction deficiencies that are not detectable to the eye once the building is completed.
These construction flaws, when added to the normal life cycle of these “Window Walls” or “Curtain Walls” as they are called.
Now in a recently published article in Toronto Life Magazine called “Faulty Towers” the reporter (“Philip Preville”) tells us that his research shows the City (Municipal Government) grabs somewhere around “Ten Million ($10,000,000.00) Dollar per high rise tower” Permit Fees, Registration Fees, etc.
I’ve written about developers flat out refusing to even communicate with buyers after they have passed the 10 Day Rescission Period locking them into the absolute most ridiculous contract imaginable!
So yesterday, with absolutely no warning (a simple notification would in my estimate have shown at least a minimum amount of respect to 12 people who each pay over $6,500 in property taxes) we opened our front door to be greeted with the following visual:
For almost a decade now owners of the “Townhouse in the Park“, has waited without formal communication or interaction, despite having paid in excess of $900 per month for professional property management for the developer and its partner the city to deliver on their promises about a “$3.5 Million Dollar total redesign of the park“.
Hey, they used that story for a decade to sell out and build three new towers (1 containing 2 actual towers being the tallest building in Canada) and these high end townhouses “in the park“!
So, forty million dollars in winnings to the City and hundreds of millions in profits to the developer, all those property taxes, levies, hook-up charges, etc., what did the consumer (tax payer) get?
“Shafted” is a pretty good description!
Take a look at today’s “picture of the day” and you will see that without any formal notice (not so much as a disclosure to our useless property manager) we NO LONGER HAVE A FRONT DOOR!
Our fine City officials so respected all these taxpayers that bought into the game (at prices ranging from $500/sq.ft. in Phase I (approx. 500 units) to $650 in Phase II (approx. 500 units) to over $800 in Phase III (approx 1,000 units) chose to turn off all irrigation to the park once the units were all sold leaving the owners with a desolate disaster area where consumers are afraid to walk and/or work.
But they did manage to continue to collect all of their property taxes every year for the past 7 years while grabbing the park maintenance budget (this equates to taking away already allocated services in tax payer budgets while increasing taxes).
Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?
And our local City Councillor had the nerve to spend taxpayer dollars to do a glossy self-promotion full colour brochure promoting her around the park despite it’s dilapidated physical condition brought on by her intentional actions!
In my books that hypocritical, dishonest and shows decided poor fiscal judgement with tax payer dollars.
I intend to request a rebate on my property taxes. The damage that the city has voluntarily done to all the owners in College Park is irreparable.
I hand delivered a letter to our Mayor after having spoken with two litigators who both suggested that there may be a solid case for damages in both income from rentals and selling going back over the 8 – 10 years of this collective (tax generating) development called College Park.
This certainly is a clear case of two wrongs (Developer and City) NOT making it right!
I’m Charles
