CONDOVIRUS EPISODE 13
Rod: Hello. Good evening everybody. My name is Rod Escayola. I'm a condominium lawyer with Gowling WLG. Welcome to Condovirus Episode 13. I think we're at 13 now. In tonight's episode we will do things a bit differently. We're all suffering a bit from COVID fatigue and so we thought we would split this webinar in two. We are going against better advice. We're going to take live Q&A from you people at home. It sounded like a bad idea from the get go and we thought, "Hey. Let's do it." So we'll do that and we will also finally share with the world the results of our most ambitious survey so far. We did a survey on condo fees across Ontario. What goes into them? How do you compare to others? What brings the cost down or up? Finally, we are prepared to share the results of this survey, with people at home. As usual we have a panel of experts who have generously accepted to take the hot seat, especially tonight, because it's going to be more like a firing squad because we're going to be taking questions from you folks at home. This week, as I said, since we're taking live Q&A's this week, I thought that the theme to introduce my panel would be maybe to focus on daredevils. Another hot headed stunt people. So that's how we're going to do it. That's how I'm going to introduce my panel tonight. Our local stuntman, Formula 1 driver, property manager with Apollo Property Management, Sean Cornish. Hello, Sean. How's it going?
Sean: Very well, Rod. Following the complaints over the last couple of weeks about my long hair and boring white backdrop, I got a haircut and a new backdrop. So hopefully it works well on video.
Rod: Wonderful. Thanks so much. Obviously were you're at the barbers are open. Not everybody has that luxury. Now, a juggler of torches and swords, and other important condo issues, a manager with Crossbridge, speaking on behalf of ACMO, we have Katherine Gow. Hello, Katherine. You there?
Katherine: Hi everyone. I am. I'm trying to keep my frizz ball contained because the barbers are not open here in Toronto. But frankly, it looks the same always, and we're well, if warm and missing our pool, but otherwise fine.
Rod: We'll talk about that.
Katherine: We will.
Rod: Yes. Speeding in on her jet ski to bring the Condo Act into the 21st century, from Lash Condo Law and speaking on behalf of CAI Canada, Denise Lash. How's it going Denise?
Denise: Hey. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to the Q&A's.
Rod: Our condo twins and tiger tamers. We have Graeme 'Siegfried' MacPherson and David 'Roy' Plotkin. I forgot which one of the two got mauled by the tiger so I'm not sure but hello Graeme and David.
Graeme: I'll be honest. I'm doing this webinar with a cat at my feet, biting at my heels, so I might be the mauled one.
Rod: Good stuff. The Jackie Chan of the stunt industry, never throwing caution to the wind, from National Life Safety Group. Hello, Jason. How's it going?
Jason: Fantastic. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Rod: Finally, we have somebody who basically just rolled onto his dirt bike, through fiery hoops, the
Evel Knievel of engineering, from Keller Engineering, Justin Tudor. Hi, Justin.
Justin: Hey, Rod.
Rod: Okay. There it is. So tonight, Q&A's. We invite you to put your questions in the Q&A box. Obviously there's the chat party line. Keep that going. It's fun to see all the exchanges. But for your questions that you want to put to the panelists we ask you to put them in the Q&A. We ask you to be kind enough to put at the very beginning of your question, in CAP letters, whether it's a legal question, an engineering question, a safety security question, a property manager question or put the name of the person you'd like to address your question to. So then when we go through the questions it'll be easy for us to see the legal questions, the engineer ones, the ones that are meant for Denise and so on and so forth. Keep the chat channel for the party line. I see some questions are coming in and hopefully my panelists are keeping track of that because I'm about to go into the disclaimer section. My favourite part, disclaimer. Keep in mind that whatever legislation we refer to tonight is Ontario legislation. For those of you listening from elsewhere you'll have to adapt this to your reality. Keep in mind that the information we provide today is accurate as of today, to the best of our ability. Today being June 10, 2020. So if you're watching this on a rebroadcast things may have changed. Very important to keep in mind that whatever we discuss today is general in nature. Is general guidance. It's not legal advice and so you may need to seek professional advice to answer the specific questions that pertain to your specific situation. Also, we are uploading this webinar onto our Condo Advisor website. You'll be able to see it later. It usually takes us about 5 to 7 days to upload, so you'll have to be patient with us, but you'll be able to access it by going to condoadvisor.ca. At the very top you'll see a webinar button. You click on that you'll be able to see next weeks webinar, but most importantly, past webinars. The Law Society requires me to tell you all that this session is recorded. So there it is. You've been warned. Okay, now. I guess before we move on let's get an update from the condo twins on what has been re-opened in Ontario? I'm not sure who would tackle that. There's been a few announcements. There was a big announcement yesterday. There was one last Friday. David, are you the first one to tackle this?
David: Sure. I'll jump in quickly. Graeme will fill in everything else I've missed. But we're now in Stage 2! We made it to Stage 2 in many of the areas across Ontario. So it's very important that you check if your area is covered by all the different new openings. So the GTA, for example, and the Golden Horseshoe are not permitted to do a lot of things that the rest of Ontario is. So, there's now re-opening of businesses and allowing for, I see I'm having issues with my video. Graeme, why don't you jump in on this and I'll try and fix these issues and get back on.
Graeme: Yeah, yeah. For sure. So, like David said, for the regions that are in Stage 2 what we can expect, as of Friday, are some more re-openings of some big ticket items like outdoor dining at restaurants and bars with patios. The malls will be open again with certain restrictions and that will probably, for any condominiums that happen to have that large scale of any commercial stuff going on within them, that's going to be something that factors in. But I think the big ticket item that's probably going to catch most people's attention are that swimming pools are going to be open in the Stage 2 regions. It's also worth noting that as of now, even in Stage 2 regions, gyms are still going to remain closed and we haven't heard anything further on that. Now, in terms of swimming pools and their imminent opening, it's important to keep in mind, I'm going to say it again as we've said several times on this webinar, that just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should. I was talking with Jason actually, earlier today, who I believe posted something about the Provincial government has announced that at least Ontario parks, despite this announcement and even if they're in Phase 2 areas, are not going to be opening their swimming pools for the remainder of the season. That said, there's going to be a lot of considerations that condos are going to have to keep in mind when they are re-opening their pools. For example, if your condo has more than 6 units in it your pool is going to be considered a Class B pool, under the Health Protection Promotion Act, and if it's been closed for at least 4 weeks which I expect it probably has, you need to advise the local public health office at least 2 weeks before you open it. We're going to get more into the kind of precautions that can be taken, and the steps that should be taken, with respect to pool openings but in terms of one last exciting item for the opening of the Province, as of Friday, regardless of whether you're in a Phase 2 area or not, the social interaction limit has increased from 5 to 10.
Rod: Right. I know we often refer to that as being the social gathering limits and we haven't seen the actual regulations. All we've seen is a press release by the Province and the details will be in the regs. It appears that this 5 limit ratio, and now which is at 10, usually doesn't only apply to social gatherings but may actually also apply to businesses that are able to open and to services being provided. I think that's my reading on it. But as Graeme said, at the end of the day, all of you, whether you're a corporation, whether you're a management firm whether you're an engineering firm, all of you have to turn your minds to, is it legal? Can I do it in Ontario? But also, is it safe and is it desirable? We'll talk about that. Now I'm going to turn to our two managers and to Jason. I want to see how things are unfolding in your neck of the woods. I'm going to start with you, maybe, Sean, with respect to re-opening because there's a lot of pressure now on condos. The pressure comes sometimes from owners, sometimes from directors, and they want amenities to be open. They want things to get back to normal kind of thing. Sean, what are we doing? Are we waiting for a vaccine? Or what are we doing?
Sean: Well, Rod, I actually stole the line and I don't know if it's David's or who originated it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should.
David: I'm going to trademark that line.
Sean: I've been using that frequently and that's still our go to. As you mentioned, in Ottawa for example, pools will be allowed to open as part of this first Stage 2 openings. But the City of Ottawa, the Ottawa Public Health has provided fairly good guidelines about what steps you need to take to open a pool. Including the notification 2 weeks ahead of time, etcetera. There's a bit of back and forth about let's just wait this out. It'll be over in a few months and we can get back to normal. That's not a position I subscribe to. I don't think we're looking at a vaccine in the next couple of months. The idea of one in the next 6 to 12 months is ambitious. Typically I'd expect 18 to 24. I'm not an epidemiologist but that's pretty much what I would be looking at. So I think we need to look at a way to operate within the COVID environment, without a vaccine, and how do we do that and how do we do it safely? So yes, there are pressures to open as long as the Province is allowing it, but we need to be cautious in how we do that. But I think we still need to have a plan to do it because we can't wait. I don't think we can reasonably wait, or expect owners to wait a year, 2 years, to get back to these amenities.
Rod: Right. So I think it's going to be a balancing act where you have to balance the risks that you're prepared to accept versus the cost that may be associated with extra cleaning, extra resources and so on. So you need to sort of put all of that in the mix and ask yourself, "What's the reward, risk versus a trade off?" Katherine, what about in Toronto? What kind of pressures are you facing and how do you answer to these pressures? Are you making changes? Are changes here to stay? What's the scoop in the GTA?
Katherine: I think it's clear that changes are here to stay. The other thing that we have to contemplate when we're preparing to re-open is how we will respond. That's a fundamental need as part of your plan is what you're response is going to be. It seems simple in many ways. You're going to close it down, you're going to clean it and then you're going to re-open it. But I think we always make the best decisions when we know that we want to re-open them. We know that there are challenges to re-opening them and there are legalities but working through what it would take to in order to re-open them. I think it boils down to three questions. I may or may not have mentioned it, again this form, it boils down to whether or not legally it can be opened and that's based on your own Municipal guidelines as well as the Ontario, whether you're in Stage1, 2 or eventually 3. The second is whether or not it needs to be sanitized between users and whether you feel it needs to be done by a third party. Then ultimately whether you're going to hire somebody else to do that. Then it becomes a really easy way of evaluating when you're going to be ready. The other thing that folks in my portfolio have been contemplating is, it's not only about re-opening the amenities, but it's about the ability to maintain your physical distancing on the entirety of the property while people are trying to now go to work. For a while using the elevator with restrictions was easier because there were fewer people going out and going to work. You also have to contemplate if you're doing major work on the property where those people are going to have their safe lunch areas, rest areas, toileting areas and how you can keep them apart. Make mention of that, because some of your amenity spaces might now become mobilization areas for those folks, because you have need of doing certain work within the condominium corporation. Finally, there is a question that came through from a property manager, "My board is insisting on opening. How do I protect myself as a manager? Because I know it's not the right thing." I do believe that you have need of documenting, where a board is looking to re-open amenities, and clearly the guidance is contrary to that. To make sure that you've put all the information in the front of them. Clearly, they are the decision makers, but it behooves us to make sure that that has been put out and in place one more time for them to look and see. I hate to wave the banner of being a fearmongerer but I do sometimes make reference to the Calgary Cargill plant. It is a meat processing plant. I believe it is one of the worst cases of transmission of COVID amongst workers. Some of the processes that they had in place, including special programs for extra pay if they miss no work, were found to be contributory factors. So what I'm asking when I make mention of that is how we will feel. We're getting better about contact tracing. Toronto Public Health or any other jurisdiction is going to be in touch with you. Perhaps to find out, or to let you know, that somebody was in your gym and they have COVID, or to get a list from you. I also have heard through the media that
Rod: Okay, okay, okay. Katherine, you're giving away everything here. The baby, the bath water, the whole ... here. So I'm going to have to cut you off.
Katherine: Go ahead.
Rod: I was waiting for you to take a breath.
Katherine: For a breath.
Rod: Apparently you don't need to breathe.
Katherine: I don't, no.
Rod: Oh my goodness. Gee. There's a lot of information there. Okay, well, thank you so much but we sort of need to keep rolling. I want to leave some thunder for Jason. Jason, I'm looking at the questions that are coming in. There's a lot of questions here. A lot of them have to do with re-opening and what goes into that decision. Do we re-open and if we're going to re-open how do we prepare? Whether you open now or later, what goes into the equation as to what you prepare for? How do you tackle this? I guess the answer, Jason, can't be don't look at it now. You've got to prepare now for when you will be opening. Right?
Jason: You're right, Rod, and I think either way it's going to take a bit of work. I'm just envisioning this as a piece here. If you go to that slide, Rod, for just a second.
Rod: The only thing I'm going to say about the slide, before you go in, is that there's a lot of information on the slide folks. We don't expect you to read this on your phone or your tablet. We're going to upload the presentation. You'll be able to view it at home carefully. Jason is not going to read this whole thing but how does that slide work?
Jason: So, quite simply, I've prepared a document that addresses each amenity. So we've got gyms and fitness rooms. We've got, and I know some of the questions have come through about card rooms, billiards rooms, golf rooms, library, indoor pools, and my simple suggestion is, is to create a one page document that addresses that amenity. What we've tried to do is create that document for you to provide some guidance. So as an example, gyms and fitness rooms right now, they shouldn't be opened in your condo right now. Do I believe that you should have a plan or a one page document that identifies what other's are doing? As an example, Good Life is re-opening. They're the largest gym in Canada. It is also going to be one of the toughest spaces to open, as Katherine said, due to increased respiratory rates, distance requirements, machinery that you've got a relocate now. You've got to come up with special rules. So down the left side is what other recent references are doing. In fact, some Provinces have bumped up from Phase 3 to Phase 2 to open up those gyms and fitness's. As many of us have kind of said here it doesn't mean we need to. But my thought process is, is that I have a one page document that allows the property manager and the board to make an informed decision. If I had to recommend right now on gyms and fitness rooms, I would wait 21 days after the gyms are opened in public. Why? Because 14 days later is the latency period, currently, that's a good guess. I would err on the side of caution because we're not running gyms here. We're running a building that happens to have a gym in it. I would add second week to it. So that's 21 days. If in 21 days after the main gyms are open in the Province, I would believe that I have enough information and enough due diligence, providing I've put these things into place or considered them in my building, that I can open them. I think that's a great approach. For example, Katherine mentioned an incident outbreak response procedure. That's a requirement for any organization to re-open, under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, as well as to protect your occupants in your facility. So that's number one. We have to have that.
Rod: Let me ask you this. Oh sorry. I was going to ask you something. Yesterday, when we were preparing for this, you talked about the importance of tracking. That really spiked my interest and my curiosity. Can you sort of tell me more about that?
Jason: Yeah. Every re-opening plan, published, whether it's the International Facility Management, the International Doctors Association, every association has now initiated that they have to track where employees have gone and where they're working. So in your condominium, if you are going to open up amenities, you need to track who goes in there in a period of a daytime. You're doing that to control access and egress, to control cleaning schedules, but you're also doing that for a hidden things that's not really discussed. That is so that you can maintain that information in the event public health calls your condo corporation and says, "We have a confirmed outbreak and this person has reported to public health that they were in the gym." You then already have that documentation. You then already have an incident or outbreak response procedure that you can follow to cross the t's and dot the i's and respond to them and support public health. I hope that answers your question.
Katherine: I think to be clear, Jason, we both agree that that would be working together with public health. Property managers don't have the robust data to be able to keep information together but we would expect have to answer to public health with respect to areas of the corporation, potentially, so that they could continue their contract tracing work.
Jason: I would suggest, to answer your question, I would suggest public health would already expect that you're tracking who is going in your amenities. So I would expect property managers to have that information if they open their amenities. Yes. It's a part of the requirement to re-open. That's my suggestion. You must track who is using those amenities. Whether that's digitally, virtually, or contact list or a scheduling program, or whether it's through a clipboard and a pen and paper.
Rod: Right, and maybe if they're fobbed controlled, if the access is controlled with a fob that that may be a way to sort of track who goes in. Although you don't see when they leave. So for sure some thoughts need to be put in to how you'll be able to track who goes in because at one point you may very well need to tell someone who was in that gym at around that date. There's something to keep in mind.
Jason: You're a condo board and you're informed a cleaner's tested positive. You have a requirement now, absolutely. So it's not just a member of the public or a resident. You're an employer. If one of your employees test positive, and that test positive cleaner was cleaning something, my mother got an email from Sobeys the other day saying the person at the meat checkout tested positive. You were at Sobeys that day. Take necessary precautions. I hope that provides some feedback. Again, that's why I'm suggesting a plan needs to be looked at, because not only do we have to control access control, we've got to now come up with new rules for the amenity. Maybe we're going to come up with you must wear shoes everywhere. Maybe you must wash your hands before you enter and wash your hands when you leave. That is all new rules that should be established or at least considered in your opening.
Rod: Okay. I'm going to tackle the questions because they're coming in. The answers have to be less than 20 seconds. 15 if it's Katherine that's answering. First question is, "How do we deal with a board that's insisting on opening the fitness room this weekend, and they seem to have their mind set on how they will do this, regardless of whether they're in Stage 2 area or not?" So how would you tackle that? Maybe let me start with Sean.
Sean: Rod, not to be too blunt about it but a property manager needs to protect themselves in the situation. Document their advice to the boards to the contrary and ensure that that's clearly laid out and there's no misunderstanding or suggestion that the property manager was in agreement with this. Obviously if there's a proper plan in place and it's been vetted then that's a whole different story. But the situation that's been raised by Dickenson Condo Management is without bookings and without official cleanings.
Rod: Right.
Sean: So that is not something that we would or could condone. So we need to distance our self.
Rod: Yeah. Denise, if I turn to you, tell us a bit more about section 38 and 37 of the Condo Act. I'm referring here to, I guess at the end of the day, if I was to advise a condo corporation I would tell them, "Before you open that you may want to get some opinion from someone. From an expert. Either a lawyer or whatever." So why's it so important for condo corps to get these opinion rather than just go ahead and do whatever they want?
Denise: Rod, you know what I thought your question was going to be, "What do you think of waivers?" Right? Because a lot of boards are saying, "Well, we'll just get owners to sign a waiver." Section 37, that's the responsibility on the board to carry out their duties honestly and in good faith, and the only way that they can do that is, let's say open up a gym or any other amenities, to get a professional opinion. Let them get a professional opinion. What would Jason say if they wanted to open up the gym? What would you say? So unless they're going to get this opinion that says go ahead and do open it, they can be personally on the hook. No waiver's going to protect them, or signage.
Rod: Right, right. Absolutely. So we've actually answered a few questions with this, because we're focusing on opening amenities and what precautions should be taken, and I think a starting point is ask yourself is it legal? Is Ontario allowing this? In our view, gyms are not allowed to open in Ontario, and forget whether you're in Stage 2 or not. I would say that if you are able to argue with a straight face that, "You know what? These restrictions don't really apply to condominiums because if we're not in the business of providing gym service." If you really want to argue that, fine, but ask yourself this. If every other gym is closed around you. If the YMCA's closed, and Good Life is closed and every other gym is closed, what makes you think for half a second that it's a good idea to open yours? How are you different if you have a 250 unit condo, or 500 unit condo, with 10 or 5 treadmills, ask yourself this question. I think it would be imprudent, beyond imprudent, to go ahead and open it. Now that I have you on the line, Denise, one of the questions maybe has to do with last week. It's got to do with, and maybe I can answer it for you actually. The cost associated with the virtual platforms. Did CondoVoter not say that the price range was on their website, right?
Denise: Yeah, so there's a price list. Anyone can just check and there's two components. You've got virtual meetings and then you've got electronic voting. Most AGMs will need both. If you have a meeting that's not voting then you just would have a meeting, a virtual meeting. The information's there and it's based on the per unit count.
Rod: Right, right. I saw, at least certainly for CondoVoter, that there's different levels of service in the sense that they can go just with voting, or they can go with voting and having CondoVoter hold their meeting, or they can go with the voting, the meeting and having a Chair actually assist them with that.
Denise: Yeah.
Rod: It's quite flexible actually.
Denise: Minute taking, Chairs, it's all there.
Rod: Okay. Now back to Katherine, maybe, a question for property manager. Katherine, you're on a timer. "Are all managers still working remotely nowadays? Are they going back to on site? How does that work?"
Katherine: I think we're still looking to restrict in person meetings. A lot of what we can do we can do remotely. Telephone, email, all wonderful tools. All of the site visits, all of the site inspections, all of the preparations for the amenities, those all need to take place in person and at your building. So I think it's always been a mix of work that's being done remotely, or behind closed doors is perhaps a better way of putting it, together with attending to those on site physical needs with some physical distancing measures, and of course staff meetings are sometimes done by Zoom or remotely and not physically on site. But that's mostly to observe physical distancing requirements.
Rod: Okay. Jason, safety and security question from Margaret. The question starts like this, "Does size matter?" But I think then she goes on to explain, she's talking about, "What if you have a some condo, 37 units? What if you have a small exercise area with only 3 pieces of equipment? Do you treat this the same as you would a downtown Toronto kind of condo with a much greater, bigger gym?" Does size matter, Jason? Have we lost Jason?
Katherine: He's on mute.
Rod: You're on mute there.
Jason: Absolutely. I think you should treat it the same. The simple reason is it's the exact same. I don't see a difference. I think you want to make sure you're limiting and adhering to all the rules that you're creating. But again, I can't answer that until you fill out that one page and figure out, okay, how many do I have? We have to consider a couple of things. The demographics of the building. Does it have access control? How would I provide or track that access control? If you can't answer these 5 or 6 things that we've kind of come up with, just from published guides and information garnered from around the world, if you can answer some of these and your board feels that you're making an informed decision, I say go for it. But I think, at the minimum, you've got to answer these because all of these other gyms and fitness rooms and pools are doing the exact same thing. In fact, the Province of Ontario, as Graeme mentioned, had turned around and said, "You know what? We did these little one page things and we figured, Holy Jumping! We can't even open these pools." And they made the decision to close the pools for the rest of 2020.
Rod: Right, right.
Jason: They made that decision based on a page or two of documentation that everybody got around and said we can make this informed decision. We're just going to cancel it. We can't meet the requirements.
Rod: Okay. Going to the condo twins. I'm not sure which one is going to take this one on but, "Can you shed some light on in suite renovations? How do we tackle that?" Graeme? David?
David: I'll jump in. I'll jump in because I spoke about it in earlier weeks. So, I'm not sure how much has really changed from our previous discussions on this. You still need to put in place those protections for your residence. You're still going to have the contractors going in and going through your common elements. Still using the elevators. So those same protections like having them agree to conditions of working during certain hours or only using the elevators at certain time periods. It's still very advisable to do that. I don't know if Rod or Denise wanted to add anything on that. I don't think moving into Stage 2 has necessarily changed all that much on that front.
Denise: I think a lot of the questions are should we allow this and it's to do them or not. I think we're now in agreement that if it can be done safely, then it should be permitted.
Rod: Right.
Katherine: I think when we spoke, and I will be brief I promise, Rod, we talked about some of the other factors that the manager has to consider with the board when they're permitting in suite renovations. Part of it had to do with some of the disturbances to the neighbours while everybody was safe at home. Whether or not they had enough space, frankly, in the elevator for tos and fros and all of the rest of it. Typically, prioritizing urgent repairs as opposed to esthetics at this particular point in time. Just as they're trying to balance the needs of all of the repair and maintenance work that had been delayed for a period of time.
Rod: Thank you. A question for Justin. Evel Knievel, Justin. This is a question on the survey actually. "How can we refute or deal with, what do we do when we don't agree with the engineers opinion? So the engineer comes in and we do believe to our very core that this probably is not in line with what we expected it?" I'm paraphrasing here because otherwise I'd be bleeped when I read the wording of the actual question. But what do we do when we don't agree with the engineer?
Justin: Well, you take the time. You prepare a letter. You itemize all our issues and then you throw that letter in the garbage because we don't want to hear it.
<laughter>
Justin: It's a real concern. As somebody mentioned, as a board you often have to rely on expert's opinions, and that doesn't mean that you don't have experience, and life experience otherwise, and you can disagree. Fundamentally, every expert who's providing you information should be able to provide you with the rationale and the methodology behind that. They should be willing to describe that and ensure that it's well explained and understood. If that doesn't assuage your concerns, there's always the change for a second opinion and if you think something's been done incorrectly and is wrong you can look for a peer review or a review of the engineer's work. There's a process that you need to go through to do that but we often see people engaging in second opinions. We'll see that with condition assessments or with reserve fund studies. It's a common practice. But first step, go to the engineer. Make sure your concerns are brought up. Make sure you give them the chance to clearly explain it.
Rod: Okay. Rapid fire here. "Will the condo authority publish condo fees across Ontario?" Well, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think that's part of their mandate.
Katherine: I don't think they're collecting the data either.
Rod: Right. So we'll talk about condo fees in a minute. Then the next rapid fire question, "Do we know if the nuisance provisions will be turned on, on July 1, 2020? And what does that mean for condo corporations?" Denise, do you have a crystal ball, Denise? Do you know.
Denise: Ah, I wish I did. It's not just the nuisance provisions. Think about all the other provisions we're waiting for. They're not happening yet. We don't know. Unless you know, Rod. I haven't heard a thing.
Rod: Yeah, no. We don't know. We don't know when that's going to be turned on but I think COVID sort of threw a COVID wrench into this equation. You'll have to wait for that. Next question that we have here is, Denise, maybe you can help with this. "Airbnb, short term rentals, are allowed I guess in the Province since last Friday. What's the impact on condos? Can condos continue to prevent it? How does that work?"
Denise: Yeah. It's the same thing, and I think, David, what's the saying again? I can't repeat that.
Katherine: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Denise: Exactly. So what you're looking after, yourself and safety of your residents, if that means preventing it, then sobeit. But there are a lot of questions, and a lot of different condominium corporations with different restrictions in their declarations, we're getting a lot of activity. So you're going to have to deal with each one an individual basis. That's not really an answer but we're saying that just because it's permitted doesn't mean that you need to permit it in your condominium corporation.
Rod: Right, right, right. Another quick question here is, "How do we deal with pets in a no pet condo when an individual needs to be accommodated?" So I'm not sure who wants to tackle that. Maybe Denise or one of the condo twins.
Denise: The first thing you do when you have someone bringing in a pet in a no pet building, is you're going to write them and you're going to say, "You have a pet and you're not allowed to have them." Then you wait for their response. If their response is, "Well, I have some sort of health condition." then you want a letter of support, a letter from a physician. You don't need the details as to what they're disability is, or why they need it, but you can ask for that information.
Katherine: I think the question, Denise, also has to do with how you communicate to the balance of the building who isn't allowed to have pets, that we do and are aware of the fact that there is a pet, without compromising your duties to confidentiality and privacy.
Rod: Yeah. Okay, folks, time is flying by. So we're going to pause for a second these questions because we're going to go to the next topic which is the condo fee survey and the results. But if we have time we'll go back to some more questions. So what I'm going to do, if I'm able to do that, that's going to be something else. I'm going to stop sharing this PowerPoint and I'm going to start another PowerPoint. This guy here. See what happens. See if we're able to do this. Share screen. Graeme, do you see the second PowerPoint on your screen?
Graeme: Mission accomplished.
Rod: Okay. Wonderful. Lift off, folks! Lift off! Okay, this has been many months in the making and we put together our most ambitious survey so far. We like to do surveys at Condo Advisors and we've put this one and this one is our most ambitious one so far. The objective behind that survey was to try to answer the old age question, how do my condo fees compare to others? We here that all the time. I live in a condo. I'm on my own board and anytime we deal with the budget the question is, are we along the same lines as the neighbour? But the reality is that you can't really easily compare the condo fees or the common expenses in one tower versus another one. There's too many things that go in the mix. With this survey we try to put together, sort of try to get some lines. What brings the costs up? Does the age of the building, does that have an impact on it? What about the size of the corporation. Does that have an impact on common expenses? What about the amenities we have, does that have an impact on the common expenses? And of course the answer to all of that is, yes. To compare apples to apples we needed to sort of get a very clear picture from across the Province. So we have about 700 respondents that have answered this survey from across the Province. Before we go in I guess, maybe Graeme, you can tackle the first portion of this presentation. Which allow us to compare apples to apples. Right? I'm turning the mic to you now. Walk us through these slides here.
Graeme: Yeah. I'll try to briefly go through the demographics that were captured and what we learned about condos in Ontario. Or at least our respondents through that. I'm cognizant of time so I'll try not to take too long on this. One of the first questions that we asked was, "Where are answers coming from?" The vast majority of them are coming from a combination of the GTA and Eastern Ontario. That makes sense to us. It's no real surprise there based on the kind of density of condominiums in these two areas.
Rod: Okay. So keep that in mind when we see the variations.
Graeme: I'm going to keep adding stuff to keep in mind as we go forward.
Rod: Okay. Who answered it.
Graeme: In terms of who answered, our most common respondents were actually board members. That's interesting, I think, because a board member is in a unique position to really have a peak behind the curtain when they're looking at condo fees and what goes into that. Then the next most common answer came from owners, at 34%. Now, something to keep in mind too, is that we went through these results and we tried to remove duplicates so that we didn't get 10 owners from condo number 234, then 3 board members from the same condo. Just to avoid overlap.
Rod: Right. Okay. Now comparing apples to apples.
Graeme: The stats that follow here are kind of interesting in that they'll give us a snapshot as to what condo land really looks like. One of the first questions here is how are condos managed. 67% of the respondents are managed by a professional manager. Only 5% identified as being self-managed and 4% identified as kind of a hybrid model where there is a manager, but only certain tasks are delegated to the manager, and the board takes care of the other management of the property tasks. I'm not sure what this means, or what this says about the state of things, 24% of respondents were not aware of how their condo was managed.
David: I think that must mean that their condos are very, very well run or very, very poorly run.
Graeme: Let's assume that it's run so well, I don't know, it just manages itself.
Rod: What about the age of the fleet?
Graeme: Most condo buildings, in terms of our respondents, the most common ages where between 11 and 20 years, and then there's a bit of a dip, and then the next most common are 31 to 40 year old buildings.
Rod: Right, right, right. Let me see. What about the number of units?
Graeme: Yeah, in terms of the kind of size of condos and the number of units, we most commonly see 101 to 250 units, and then the next most popular answers are kind of below that, and then when you get bigger than 250 units there's a significant drop off in the number of units.
Rod: All this, folks, will lead us to what's the average condo out there and then we'll talk about the fees. I think let's stick to his here because I want to move ahead a bit. Let's focus on what's included in the common expenses in the condo fees.
Graeme: Yes. When we asked our respondents is water included? Is hot water? Is air conditioning included? We can see the results here. I understand too that there's a lot of information being presented here. Worry not. Like the slide that Jason showed earlier this will be shared.
Rod: Oh, wait a second, Graeme. That's not true. It will only be shared.
Graeme: This is only shared if you answer.
Rod: If you complete the survey you will get a copy of this slide.
Graeme: Look at me. Trying to give out free stuff.
Rod: Look at that.
Graeme: So if you want to see, answer the survey. But you know, when we consider, for example, that 30% of respondents have water included in their common expenses, that means that their expenses are probably going to be higher as a result, and the other 70% are probably going to have lower common expenses as a result. But the give and take of that is that they're paying their own water.
Rod: Right, right, right. Okay. Next slide. Oh yeah, this one is tough to see here.
Graeme: This ones a bit of a doozy. What we've done here is listed basically every amenity under the sun and tabulated what percentage of respondents indicated that their condo has this amenity. So, not surprisingly the most common responses were indoor parking, coming in at about 70%, followed by outdoor parking and grass cutting, hovering around 50%. There's lots here and if you do the survey you can review the slides. Some interesting ones that I thought I'd point out that were kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, with very low answers, were pet washing services, private golf courses and movie theatres. Who would've thought?
Rod: I noticed that 0% of the condos in Ontario have a prayer room or any place of worship. So there it is. You're not going to pay condo fees on that, I guess.
Graeme: I guess not.
Rod: I noticed that 40% of condos across Ontario are fobbed. So that's an interesting statistic, to me anyway. What about pools? Can you spot the pools? Indoor pools, we're at about 27% and I can't see the outdoor pools.
Graeme: On the topic of fobs, it will be interesting to see how that evolves in the future, but this data, Rod, I believe was captured in or about February. Correct?
Rod: Right. Right, right, right. Okay, what about charging stations? We heard so much about the EV charging station. We agonized over the regulation. Everybody just had to soul search for months on end.
Graeme: It was a big deal. Letters were written, tears were shed and at the end of the day, all the hullabaloo, for now maybe was a little overstated because 70% of our respondents have indicated that they don't have EV charging stations. Now I think it's still a good initiative and it may just be that the uptake on this is a little slower. We'll have to see how that continues to evolve.
Rod: Okay. Graeme, what's the average condo in Ontario? Before I dive into the fees.
Graeme: If I were to describe to you the average condo in Ontario, and that's based on the results in our surveys and you can find this kind of summary on the Condo Advisor blog, but the average condo in Ontario if we take our respondents answers is that it's a professionally managed, about 11 to 20 year old building, usually about 11 to 25 floors and matching that about 100 to 250 units, its units are between 1,000 and 1,500 square feet in size. We didn't really get to go into this too much in this presentation but that may in fact be skewed by, we had a relatively large number of townhomes identified in the survey. So that may have skewed the average size of the unit a little bit in the bigger end. The average condo, it has indoor parking and it does not have an EV charging station.
Rod: And everybody around the table will be fascinated to learn that, fitness room wise, 37% of condos appear to have a fitness room. So all of this agony over the fitness room for 37% of you out there. 35% have an indoor pool and 12% have an outdoor pool. Okay. So what does that mean for condo fees? And this was the purpose of this survey. Now that Graeme has described Ontario's condo land, what does that mean? On average, everything considered, everything put together, the average condo fee if you calculated on a square foot basis, in Ontario, it's 58 cents per square foot. Eastern Ontario's at 58. GTA is at 66, a bit higher up. Northern Ontario, down at 35. That's the place to have a condo, fee wise anyway. That is if you put everything together without sort of drilling down on what amenities are involved and so on and so forth. That's the average. Now, if we look at the age of condos, again I'm comparing always the average which is 58 cents per square foot, and if you compare that with the age, depending on the age of your condo corporation you will see that there's not a lot of variation here. It's interesting that new condos, less than 2 years, are at 46 cents per square foot. What does that tell us?
Katherine: They're underfunded in the reserve fund.
Rod: Connect the dots here, right? So people want to sell condo units so the budget is very low and that's how you got people to buy into this beautiful shiny great amenity filled condo corporation. But year 3 and onwards is where the piper shows up to get paid. You can see that year 2 to 10 there's a spike at 60 cents per square feet. So that's an interesting observation here. Let's keep moving. What about if we look at the height of condos? Again, we're comparing with the average which is 58 cents a square foot, but if you look at the height of condominium you will see that a building that is between 26 and 50 floors, is the most expensive one to live in. If you only consider the height again, you're at 73 cents per square foot. Townhomes bring the cost down, obviously, at 38 cents per square feet and vacant land are at 28. So it's interesting to compare. Again, what I'm doing here is I'm looking at the average and I'm just focusing on one specific particularity of the condo. In this case the height of the condo. Moving on with the number of units, again, 58 is the average. You can see that it seems like the bigger you get the more expensive it becomes to manage. Which is a bit odd. I would have thought that it would be an economy of scale but I guess you also have to consider that the very big ones, 500 units or more, are probably in the GTA. The cost of living is probably higher. They probably have all sorts of amenities. So, that sort of also pulls the statistics maybe that way. But you're able to compare again fees versus number of units per corporation. Okay, let's keep moving. The reserve fund allocation. That's an interesting one. What percentage of your operating budget is allocated to the reserve fund? It seems that, oh Katherine, I think you were onto something. The average is 33% of your condo fees go towards the reserve fund, unless you're less than 2 years old where you're slightly underfunded, you're down at 13%. That speaks volumes. I think there's an issue there. But also when you look at older buildings you will see there's an increase in there contribution towards the reserve fund, percentage wise. So if you're at the 30 year mark, 36% of your condo dollars go towards the reserve fund as opposed to the average which was 33. Let's keep moving. How has fees varied over time? That was an interesting set of questions we've asked people. Condo fees are the big boogeyman out there. People are talking about the condo fees and we're being bled to death and it's costing a lot of money and there's no predictability and the increases are just unpredictable. So we've asked them, have they had special assessments? 56% of our respondents said that they had never had a special assessment and another 25% said, yeah sure but rarely. So you have to add that up. We're at 81% of the respondents said special assessments don't seem to be an issue. You do have 12% of the respondents that said that, yes, we've actually had special assessments and big ones. So, again, these stats are not perfect but these stats give us fair indication of the lay of the land. What about increases over time? We've asked them, have your fees increased over time largely, moderately? Have they stayed the same? Have they decreased? Funny guy. Well, 23% have decreased apparently and 15%, I love that, 15% of the respondents have no idea whether their fees have increased. Must be nice to have that much money that you have no idea if your fees are increasing or not. But you will see that the vast majority of the respondents, 40% say that their fees have increased, moderately, over the last few years. Keep moving. I love this one. Are you getting value for your money? We've asked people are you getting value for your money in your condo fees? 14% say absolutely. 36% said yes. That totals 50% almost of the respondents. Did I get this right? Are of the view that they're getting their money's worth. At the very bottom you have 9% that are of the view that they're not getting their money's worth, at all. That's fairly low, I would think, and the same 14% who are blissfully ignorant of whether or not they're getting their moneys worth. Okay. But look at this. We drilled down further and then we've asked the same question and we split it between directors and owners who are not on the board. Whether they felt that they were getting their money's worth. So directors are blue. Non-directors are red. So you can see that there's a big difference. The directors absolutely believe they're getting their money's worth and yes, when they answer yes, you get about 50% of those that really are the view that they're getting their money's worth. When you go on the other end of the spectrum, those who felt that they were somewhat getting their money's worth or not at all, you can see that the red bar indicating those are non-directors, are of the view that they're not getting their money's worth. What does that say? I'm not sure. It is possible that the directors have more information and may be we are doing a poor job at advertising and educating the troops as to what it is that they're getting for these condo fees. May be we need to sort of educate people and that may change that. Or it may also be that the directors have simply drank the Kool-Aid and they're very happy with how things are going. But I think it says a lot here. What else do we got here? The most costly amenities. So we split it down by amenities and we're almost done folks. I hope you enjoyed that. I actually had a blast putting this together and I hope you find that useful. If you want the slides you need to answer the survey and then we'll email the slides to those who have answered. But the most expensive amenity is a cellar. Again, that may have to do with the fact that cellars are in high end condominiums and that may have an impact on that. Laundromat at 76 cents per square foot. Then golf courses and then you'll see there's a big bunch of staff. Staff is costly 24/7 security guard, concierge services, live-in super. Those tend to bring, I mean there's value added when you have these services, but that tends to bring the cost, the common expenses, up to 74 cents per square foot.
Graeme: Actually, I just want to give a gold star to Dwight, in the comments, who pointed out that bigger buildings means 24 hour security which equals high costs.
Katherine: Most invariably, yes.
Rod: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Let's see what else we got. I'm not looking at the chat line so I'm not sure what's coming in because I'm focusing on the slides here. Then you see the costs goes down depending on what's the amenity. So if I go to the last, picnic table and gazebo areas are not that expensive. So they are found usually around, in condos, where the fees are at 35 cents per square foot and so on and so forth. Piano rooms apparently are at 60 cents per square. So again, these stats are not perfect, but I think they provide us with, I think, very interesting sort of data. It helps to maybe compare to others. Keeping in mind that there's too many things that go into the mix. You really can't compare yourself to the Jones' across the street because too many things go in the mix. Any reactions, maybe, from the panelists? The managers or Denise or anybody to these stats?
Katherine: I think whenever you're looking at statistics you want to look at your comparable. As interesting as this information is, Rod and Graeme did a really great job in describing the fact that it represented all of condo land. When you're trying to make sense of it for your own site, what your going to probably want to do is, do bit more of a localized survey of buildings that represent more like your own. Obviously if you're a 500 unit, 30 storey condominium you're comparable is not going to be a 30 unit townhome. So to find some comparables that make good sense can also give you some better benchmark information.
Rod: Right, right, right. So the average, I was going to say and I forgot to mention, that the least expensive condo to live in is a townhome in Northern Ontario, built less than 2 years ago with less than 50 units. The most expensive condo to live in is in the GTA, 2 to 10 years old, has at least 500 units, up to 50 floors, has a wine cellar, a security guard, a concierge service and a live-in super. Denise, you were going to say something.
Denise: I was going to say something because I think we all hear these comments said at Annual General Meetings where owners will stand up and say, "The building across the street is exactly like our building and their common expenses are a lot less." We have to make sure that it's stressed that it depends on how that building is managed. So you have two exact buildings. Well they haven't been maintained over the past 15 or 20 years. Depends on how management handles things.
Rod: Right. Absolutely. That certainly goes into the mix.
Katherine: I think you hit upon the most critical factor. Whenever you're talking about fees is the communication of it. When folks don't see value in their fees it is, I think sometimes, because they don't understand how all of those costs are built. Right? Because a lot of them come down to obligations we have. Now there'll be new obligations on account of COVID, I'm afraid.
Rod: Right. Right, right, right. Let me see if I can go back now to our prior slide deck. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do this. Any questions on the chat channel, Graeme, that we have time to answer before I go and figure out how to put the slide deck on the screen?
Graeme: In the chat or in the Q&A?
Rod: Either.
Graeme: Well, I mean, we've got probably more questions in the Q&A than we'll have time to deal with. 22 of them.
Rod: Okay. There it is. Do you have now the PowerPoint on the screen?
Katherine: Yes.
Rod: Okay, wonderful. Let me just move here. That's it folks. I think that we sort of went around the room and the question and answers. I think we sort of ran out of time. It's already probably 6 o'clock. 6: 02. So let me go around the table as I usually do to see if there's any sort of parting words of wisdom. I'd like to thank my panelists. I realize that some of them got more limelight than others. That's how it is. So let me start with Jason Reid, any parting words before we go? You're muted.
Jason: No. Thank you for having me. I mean, listen, I think the simple thing is the best question I heard was, "How do I protect myself?" You need to have something on paper because 6 months down the road when you're asked, "Well, I told the board members and they said no or they said open." You need something to fall back on and the only way to do that is with a piece of paper.
Rod: Right. Thank you very much. Next in line, Justin Tudor, of Keller Engineering. Parting words of wisdom. Unmute yourself.
Justin: Reserve fund planners who are limiting the windows to 30 years, especially in new condominiums, are causing that massive underfunding that's represented in your survey. They're doing a massive disservice to their condominiums and the industry and should go away.
Rod: Okay. Very good. The world's on fire, Justin. Thank you. Sean Cornish, of Apollo Property Management. Words of wisdom before we go.
Sean: Yeah, just really quickly. If you're a condominium director, on the board of directors, please be patient and don't feel that you need to cave into the pressure to re-open things. If you're a property manager just do your due diligence. Get a plan in place as Jason said and we can all get through this.
Rod: Okay. Very good. Katherine Gow, of Crossbridge speaking on behalf of ACMO. Words of wisdom. 15 seconds.
Katherine: I couldn't agree more, Sean. I think the more you bring all of the homeowners into your thought process so that they understand what the barriers are to opening, the more understanding you'll get. Folks won't like it, necessarily, but they will understand it. So, keep calm, wash your hands, be clear about what you're restrictions are and when those things will change in your community.
Rod: My favourite condo lawyer, outside of Gowling, Denise Lash, of Lash Condo Law. Words of wisdom before we go.
Denise: I may have said this last time but it's better to be unpopular, not open up the amenities, than it is to have a lawsuit.
Rod: Absolutely. Condo twins, Graeme MacPherson. Thank you so much for your input today. Words of wisdom before we go.
Graeme: Yeah. With these re-openings we're seeing, and the social limits increasing, just be careful. I know it's going to be exciting and I know we've all missed going to patios and being with more than 5 people. But just make sure to keep being careful, because we've gotten here as a result of everybody in the Province's hard work, and we just want to try not to undue hat.
Rod: Absolutely. David Plotkin, words of wisdom. Parting words.
David: Yeah. Everyone summarized all really well. Changes are happening. The weather is getting nice. Don't get too excited. We still have obligations and always remember to stay in your lane and seek the advice from the requisite professionals when you really need engineering advice, or management advice or legal advice. You really do need to rely on that even as you get the pressure from all the members in your community to start opening everything up again.
Rod: Right. Right, right, right. So next week, there's another webinar next week. Wednesday, June 17, 5: 00pm. The information will be posted on Condo Advisor. You will need to register again. For those of you who want to attend I haven't picked up a topic yet and I slowly but surely running out of ideas. So this is your opportunity to send us suggestions. You can do this when you do register, again it's on condoadvisor.ca, you click on the webinar tab at the top and then you'll be able to register and there's a box where you can give topics or ideas or suggestions as to what you'd like to have covered next week. I will summarize today's words of wisdom. Re-opening the Province is a bit like going to the nudist beach. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Right? So I said it. There it is. Folks, thank you very much for tuning in once more, and we will see you next week at same channel, same place, same people. Take care everybody. Thanks again for spending your evening with us.