Island condo association seeks B.C. owners to help advise province on condo law reform:

From: Deryk Norton
To: editor@bccondos.ca
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 8:29 AM
Subject: Yes, BC Strata Law is Worse Than Elsewhere

Dear Editor:

The Vancouver Island Strata Owners Association (VISOA) is consulting with strata owners, government officials and MLAs regarding problems with the Strata Property Act and related legislation. In recent months VISOA board members have met with several MLAs on Vancouver Island as well as officials with the Ministry of Finance. These consultations are focusing on concerns expressed to VISOA by its members and have resulted in the attached Discussion Paper of 13 issues. This discussion paper is also posted at www.visoa.bc.ca

We are meeting with interested strata owners on Vancouver Island to identify:

- legislation concerns not included in the Discussion Paper, and
- proposed solutions.

The next meeting is scheduled for Sunday, March 16/08, 2 p.m. at Beban Park Social Centre (Rooms 20 & 21), 2300 Bowen Road, Nanaimo. Another one is being planned for Victoria on March 30 at 1 p.m. at the Pro Patria Legion. There is no charge to attend these meetings.

From meetings so far and from further research we have found (1) that B.C. has no audit requirement, unlike Ontario and Washington state and (2) B.C. has no requirement for a study to determine the state of the building, unlike Alberta and Ontario. We have also found that some strata council members have been concealing the true state of the building until they sold their units. I expect the list of issues will be much longer when we finish our public meetings.

Please respond to me directly if you are interested in attending the meeting or if you have any comments or suggestions in response to the attached Discussion Paper. Please respond by e-mail or call me at (250) 743-8724. Also, please feel free to post this information on your website.

Sincerely,

Deryk Norton
VISOA Board Member - Government Relations

 

Our reply:

From: editor
To: Deryk Norton
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 3:29 PM
Subject: Re: Yes, BC Strata Law is Worse Than Elsewhere

Wow, way to get our day off the floor! ... Although, we have had our hopes raised like this before and nothing happens, which is why we suspect the proliferation of doomed housing is indeed a policy decision by the province - consumers are sacrificed to grease the new failed housing economy, which benefits the builders and those wealthy enough to use doomed housing as an investment, a group that includes plenty of lawyers, by the way, which may explain why legislative improvement has been so slow. That said, however, we'll have a look at the paper and see what we can add. Right off the top, we'd say:

1. Until there are no more tarps going up, building designers - engineers, architects or both - MUST as a condition of professional accreditation - TRACK the PERFORMANCE of ALL multi-unit housing construction for the predicted service life of EACH multi-unit condo complex. BCIT is free to test construction materials in its lab. That's fine, but bldg designers must track the performance of their work beginning at completion at least with respect to multi-unit housing until it ceases to fail so predictably. Really, bldg designers are the only people who can do this. It troubles me greatly that they have not yet taken it upon themselves to do so as a matter of public record. The fact that they haven't tells us pretty clearly that there is plenty more trouble ahead.

Such an obvious omission is especially reprehensible as we face the challenge of global warming. What's the carbon footprint of all these leakers, one wonders? The constant repair, renovate, rebuild, redevelop .... How many of us live in places less than 25 years old that have undergone two and sometimes three efforts at major repair? No, these characters have to start tracking their work in a meaningful way. They must first own the problem if we are to solve it. They owe it to the public as a condition to the privilege they enjoy as members of a profession just as lawyers owe the public various duties. More on them later.

2. Letters of assurance/technical bldg audits AND bldg developer/designer's leaker history MUST be registered on title at the Land Title office along with complete maintenance plans to guide the strata council in the care and feeding of the bldg in their care. How else can anyone come up with a reasonable strategy for bldg management? How else can buyers interpret strata minutes? How else can bldg designers and contractors limit their liability if the thing fails?

3. Until there are no more tarps, EACH development application for multi-unit housing province-wide MUST CONTAIN a complete list of all previous multi-unit housing builds by EACH MEMBER of the dvpmt team (no hiding behind new or numbered companies) along with a current performance review of EACH complex. It's getting very difficult to search A/E and developer histories at the B.C. Courts website, and why should owners/buyers have to work that hard, anyway? The leaky condo debacle is ultimately the product of the construction industry as countless leaky condo judgments at the courts website will attest. Unfortunately, the software no longer permits appropriate search limits at the courts site, which makes the search process extremely onerous, PLUS bders and A/Es are free post-leaky condo litigation to set up shop under a new name. Tricky, tricky. Such a lack of transparency allows outfits like Polygon whose leakers have cost the province millions to do it all again! Consumers might have a chance if this information was easily available to the public as a matter of law on development applications and not just confidentially to planning authorities, who are then free to take it into account or not. Human nature tells me that wherever there is discretion in these matters, there is most likely grift. Let's change the legislation to close those gaps.

4. And yes, bring on Ontario's (Alberta's is modelled after this) professional (can't be some amateur self-described inspector) MANDATORY regular RESERVE FUND STUDIES. They provide for regular complete professional inspections INCLUDING EVERYTHING THAT IS COLLECTIVELY OWNED INSIDE AND OUT as well as regularly updated plans for maintenance and repair. How else can strata councils create a reasonable funding/repair/replacement strategy? How else can buyers tell whether the strata corporation has been effectively managed?

5. Finally, the province MUST create an office similar to the excellent Residential Tenancy Office for condo owners! It must be staffed by people who are prepared to answer questions about condo ownership and management both orally and in writing. It is UNCONSCIONABLE to leave consumers at the mercy of investor owners and real estate fraudsters, none of whom have any interest in what it's actually like to live in their miserable commons - or worse - condo lawyers. Now, there's a group of characters... they're on every side of the real estate transaction at the same time from the developer's incorporation to the final sale of the unit. It's got to stop! Somehow the law society steamrolled this one through a few years back. Attys felt realtors were getting too big a slice of the pie when it was lawyers who gave the sacred undertaking (access to the actual money payment, which often gets them into trouble), so attys are now allowed to act as realtors, too, in the same transaction! This is INSANE! Consumers should NOT be taking legal advice from someone who's financially interested in the transaction in any way. PERIOD!

More later maybe. In the meantime, we'll post your email and mtg details on the homepage ASAP.

Ed.

 

More on lawyer/realtors - P.U.!

Note: We have neither read nor in any way endorsed any of the publications for sale at VISOA. We frankly dislike the notion of charging for information that is publicly available FREE, such as the Strata Property Act Instruction Guides, or that may or may not be accurate or even advisable. There is nevertheless wisdom in networking, and the Discussion Paper listed above is certainly in line with our views, though, as evident above, we would go much further.

Also see our Condo Law FAQs and Discussion Forum.

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