The article below By Mark Weisleder was published in the Toronto Star (MoneyVille).

A condominium is like a small town. It has a board of directors made up of its residents much like a local council, it has rules, restrictions, bylaws and even fines for misbehavior. The condo across the street that looks the same, but it may be a completely different community.

That’s why it pays to keeping a handful of things to keep in mind when it comes to finding the right unit for you.

1. The 3P’s – Pets, People and Parking

Many condos prohibit or restrict pets from dogs and cats, to goldfish and snakes. There may also be rules restricting the number of people that can occupy a unit, whether you can barbecue on the balcony or put a satellite dish on the outside wall. Other restrictions include the time of day when you can play musical instruments, use the pool or the party room.

There may be further restrictions about renting your unit. Your parking spot may be owned by you or owned by the condominium, and this will affect whether you can sell your parking space or be able to buy one from another unit for a second car.

2. Reserve Fund

How much money is in the reserve fund and how much is needed? The board must make sure that the common condo elements, including the lobby, hallways, elevators, furnace, roof and parking garage are always maintained and repaired. This means conducting reserve fund studies. Ontario’s Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) will add approximately 4% to a condo’s annual expenses because items such as utilities, security, landscaping and snow removal are now being taxed. So common condo expenses will rise going forward. If the condo’s reserve fund isn’t topped up it could lead to costly special assessments in the future. If there is no reserve fund study done, be very wary of buying.

3. Professional management

Most condo directors do not have the business, legal or people skills required to manage their building. They are responsible for a budget that could be in the millions and must also deal with disputes between owners and the condo corporation. They also require a working understanding of the Provincial Condominium legislation that governs their condo. Even a relatively simple decision such as when to turn on the air conditioning requires someone who understands how the system works, as the decision will affect unit owners in different ways, depending on whether they are on the sunny or shady side of the building.

That’s why a property manager helps. This person can offer advice and help solve problems among unit owners.

4. Insurance deductible

If your building insurance policy contains a $5,000 or $10,000 deductible, then be sure to speak to an insurance specialist about obtaining your own unit coverage to protect your contents and any improvements that you make to your unit.

5. Were alterations legal?

If any alterations were made – check to make sure that any necessary approval was obtained by the condo board, so you do not have to go through the cost of getting approved – which could require further inspection and certification by plumbers, architects or engineers.

6. Do the owners get along?

Knock on some doors before you buy and ask people about the building. Also have a look at the minutes of the last annual meeting. Was it orderly or were many items disputed. You can tell a lot about whether owners get along as a group by what takes place at the annual meeting. Be suspicious if there has not been a meeting in over a year.

7. Status Certificate

The status certificate issued by each condo should provide an up to date copy of all important condominium documents, the budget, the last annual meeting, whether there are arrears of common expenses, any special assessments being considered and whether or not there has been a Reserve Fund Study. Your purchase agreement must be conditional on your being satisfied with the contents of this important document. Review this carefully with your real estate salesperson and your lawyer.

Before deciding on which condominium town you would like to live in, ask the right questions in advance and you won’t be hit with unwelcome surprises after you move in.



Independent of market conditions, home staging is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of Toronto area homes and condos.

StagingWorks is the premier Toronto home staging company. We provide a complete range of professional services which include vacant home staging, occupied home staging and condo staging. We have staging packages to accommodate most budgets and serve Toronto, GTA and surrounding areas.

Please visit our home staging portfolio for more samples of our staging projects. Give us some some details on your home and when you’re planning to sell, and get a free home staging estimate. Or, call us for a free estimate at (647) 409-2091 or anne@StagingWorks.ca.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.





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Merry Christmas and all the best from the team at StagingWorks.

The article below by Margaret Wente was published in the Globe and Mail.

Twenty-five years ago, my husband and I moved into a charming little cottage in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood. He’d bought it as a fixer-upper. The older working class was moving out, and the young professionals were moving in. By the time we sold the place, it was almost the only little cottage left. Soon it will be bulldozed and replaced by a McMansion.

As went our street, so goes Toronto. It’s becoming a city of extremes. The middle class is disappearing, and the affluent and the poor are increasingly segregated by neighbourhood. The two groups live in different worlds. And these worlds rarely overlap, except perhaps in ethnic restaurants or, occasionally, on the subway (but not the bus).

Wednesday’s front-page story in Toronto editions of The Globe on this accelerating trend drew a blizzard of highly emotional responses from readers. Right-wing policies are to blame! No, left-wing policies are to blame! There seems to be only one point of agreement: Toronto is no longer the city that works.

In fact, Toronto is no different from the rest of the developed world. “It’s the pattern you see in all big cities,” says Joel Kotkin, an expert on urban demography. As cities reach certain levels of affluence, the middle classes move to the periphery. Just look at New York, London, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Chicago – once middle class, now sharply polarized between rich and poor. Even cities in egalitarian Scandinavia are splitting into income extremes.

The most extreme example of this trend is London, where, a few blocks from the Thames, you might think you’ve stumbled into the Second World. As Mr. Kotkin has written, “Cities often offer a raw deal for the working class, which ends up squeezed by a lethal combination of chronically high housing costs and chronically low opportunity in economies dominated by finance and other elite industries.” Once the cost of living is factored in, more than half the children in inner London live in poverty. In Toronto, the child poverty rate is as high as 32 per cent.

Meantime, as real estate prices soar, middle-income folks move out. From Toronto, they move to Ajax, Barrie, Guelph and anyplace where they can buy a house for less than $466,000 (the current Toronto average). Jobs have migrated, too. In Southern Ontario, the greatest job growth is outside Greater Toronto.

Even people who can afford the high cost of city life are choosing to get out. Over the past decade, Mr. Kotkin points out, the biggest migration of Americans has been to cities with populations between 100,000 and one million. Who needs the hassle of congestion and commuting when you can live in a secondary centre, make the same salary, and get twice the house? The same thing is happening here, too. Of course, Toronto’s latte classes may look down on you if you move to Guelph. But these days, even Guelph’s got latte.

But poor people can’t afford to leave the city. They need access to public transit (however lousy), subsidized housing (however crummy), social networks and social services. Besides, as Mr. Kotkin says, “there aren’t many jobs for poor people at RIM.”

The income polarization of the cities is almost universal. Yet, the answers are elusive – especially when, as Mr. Kotkin argues, many city governments have been focusing on all the wrong things. He is highly critical of “progressive” governments that believe the future lies in bike lanes, sustainability and better ways to attract the hip, cool, creative class. Like it or not, he argues, the real challenge is how to grow, promote and sustain the middle class. “Cities have been so dominated by promoting hip coolness that they haven’t focused on creating good new blue-collar jobs.”

That won’t be an easy task. More business-friendly policies would help. But cities such as Toronto also face the larger challenges of the post-industrial revolution, where upward mobility is sharply diminished and where education and technology are creating much greater separations between the haves and have-nots. Toronto’s struggle to restore the middle ground will be long and hard. It will be the greatest challenge the city’s leaders face in the coming generation.
 
 
Independent of market conditions, home staging is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of Toronto area homes and condos.
 
StagingWorks is the premier Toronto home staging company. We provide a complete range of professional services which include vacant home staging, occupied home staging and condo staging. We have staging packages to accommodate most budgets and serve Toronto, GTA and surrounding areas.
 
Please visit our home staging portfolio for more samples of our staging projects. Give us some some details on your home and when you’re planning to sell, and get a free home staging estimate. Or, call us for a free estimate at (647) 409-2091 or anne@StagingWorks.ca.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.





Please take 60 second to complete our poll on the left side of the screen.

This downtown Toronto condo was staged and it sold for 99% of asking price in 10 days. This project is an example of a client using StagingWorks’ services to command a premium selling price for their property, relative to other competitive listings in the buidling.

Independent of market conditions, home staging in Toronto is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of GTA homes and condos.

StagingWorks is the premier Toronto home staging company.  We provide a complete range of professional services which include vacant home staging, occupied home staging and condo staging.  We have staging packages to accommodate most budgets and serve Toronto, GTA and surrounding areas.

Please visit our home staging portfolio for more samples of our staging projects.  Give us some some details on your home and when you’re planning to sell, and get a free home staging estimate.   Or, call us for a free estimate at (647) 409-2091 or anne@StagingWorks.ca.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.