I don't understand how the condominium business model works over the long term. Sure, condos are great for builders: they put the buildings up, collect enormous sums of money from purchasers, and then go off and repeat the process. In Toronto, where the housing market has gone insane, builders go one better: they buy the land, build a model suite, and then raise money by selling suites in a building that doesn't exist yet. When they've raised enough money, they then put up the building. I know people who have had to wait over a year to move into their condo; one friend of mine had to move at least once while waiting, as construction of his unit was delayed.
As I understand it, condominium maintenance is paid for by the condo owners themselves - the necessary expenses are totalled up, and divided by the number of residents. On the surface, this seems workable. But what will happen as the shiny new green-glass downtown condo palaces age? From my own experience, I fear that it won't be pleasant.
You see, I live in a rental building that is now a little over 40 years old. During the 5 1/2 years I have been here, all the windows have needed to be replaced, lots of old pipes have had to be dug up and fixed, and the elevators have just been completely overhauled. None of these renovations were cheap. For a rental company, this is part of the cost of doing business: they get their costs back by collecting regular monthly rent from their tenants. (Or applying for higher rent hikes. But that's another story.)
Condo owners would have to pay for any major overhauls out of their fees, which would go up like crazy. This could lead to some interesting moral dilemmas:
- Owners might be tempted to skimp on maintenance to save money. At the very least, there would likely be heated discussions between people who are willing to spend money to ensure maximum safety, and those who are struggling to get by and can't afford huge fee hikes.
- Owners would likely be tempted to bail out of their condos and buy newer ones to save maintenance money. This would lead to a guessing game: when is the optimum time to sell?
- People who want to stay in one place for a long time would likely be out of luck: either their fees would go way up, or the value of their property would go down just as they start to get old. No fun.
Okay, I will rant a bit about the U.S. electoral process, while I'm still here. Something I've never understood: why do they allow the executives of a major voting-machine company to give money to one of the political parties? The conflict of interest here is obvious, don't you think?
The logic is that Diebold execs should have the right to do what they want on their own time when not speaking as company representatives. In most cases, this makes sense - but not when it's the people who are counting the ballots! I'd think that these guys have to be scrupulously, almost anal-retentively neutral - after all, the validity of American democracy is at stake. I don't necessarily believe that Diebold is rigging their voting machines - but a lot of relatively sensible people do believe it, and have doubts about, say, Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000.
I'm glad that Canada still does it the old-fashioned way: you take a pencil and put an X on a piece of paper, and put the piece of paper in a box. Then, pleasant senior citizen volunteers take out the pieces of paper and count them. If there's a problem, people eventually recount them. I may not like Stephen Harper (hell, I can't stand Stephen Harper), but I know that he got into office fair and square. America isn't sure whether Bush's election was legit, and that's obviously a Very Bad Thing.