Window walls look great and are the newest rage. Yet some experts warn
us that this is an unproven technology that may cost their owners a lot
of money and grief in the future.
Condo glass panels may look great, but you'll pay more for
heat and AC
Dan Barnabic—author of the Condo Bible for Canadians
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published 07 July 2014
“What does the future hold for condos and how long will they last?”
These are by far the questions I am asked most often by condo buyers
and owners alike.
Life span of condo building components
Condo buildings consist of thousands of individual components. Over
time, due to wear and tear, those components need repairs and
replacements. Knowing how old the complex is and when certain
components were last repaired or replaced will give you an idea of when
they’ll likely need maintenance and replacements again.
The chart at the bottom of this article
shows operational life expectancies of major mechanical components of a
condo complex over the years. From the sea of available data and
through consultation with building experts, I created this chart which
I believe provides a fair reflection of maintenance and replacement
costs over time to an average high-rise condo building.
The first major component that will need maintenance and replacement is
the roof of the complex. It will usually last up to about 10 years,
after which it will require maintenance and replacement by the time it
reaches 15 to 18 years.
Plumbing/piping will probably be the last as quality and durability has
improved over the years, so you can expect it to remain operational for
about 50 years. From thereon, it will require maintenance and eventual
replacement as well. Standard size windows may also last about 50
years, requiring occasional maintenance such as replacement of screens
and sealant. Complexes built of all glass windows need to be addressed
in more detail.
Bear in mind that maintenance and repairs to the inside of the
individual unit are the direct responsibility of the unit owner.
Monthly maintenance fees do not cover anything inside the condo unit.
Appliances, heating, air-conditioning, and electrical fixtures inside
the unit have to be maintained and eventually replaced by the unit
owner.
All glass windows
Because of their appeal, facades of new condo buildings lately have
been transforming into glass, often extending from floor to ceiling of
each condo unit. It gives condos a more attractive look and is a great
selling feature, but building experts have known for quite some time
that today’s glass-walled structures are less energy efficient than the
stone and concrete buildings that were put up 40 or 50 years ago.
the “pariah”
buildings
Indeed, as energy costs climb, glass towers may become the “pariah”
buildings of the future. University of Waterloo Professor John Straub
(who wrote a noteworthy paper called Can highly glazed building facades
be green, was quoted as saying that “With these buildings, both skin
and the mechanical systems are going to have to be redone in a 25-year
time frame. The concrete structure will be there for a long time but in
20, 25 years time, we are going to see a lot of scaffolding on the
outside of the buildings to replace the glazing, sealants and the glass
itself.”
Another scientist, Ted Kesik at the John H. Daniels Faculty of
Architecture at the University of Toronto, warns that as energy costs
climb, the costs of heating and cooling glass towers will increase
monthly fees. He wrote a paper called The Glass Condo Conundrum, on the
potential liabilities of glass towers. These experts suggest that the
maintenance costs of glass skinned towers will skyrocket in 25 years
time as the buildings age. With no insulation values, apart from a half
inch of glass between two panels, windows will begin to fog up and the
costs of replacing entire walls of glass will be prohibitive on
high-rise structures that can only be accessed from swing states.
Some experts go so far as to predict that replacing the all-glass outer
layers of buildings may become necessary as early as 15 to 20 years
from the day that the condo is built, and cost as much as $80,000 per
unit. In short, what seems very attractive and appealing to condo
buyers today may come to haunt them in the not-so-distant future.
Need for cyclical repairs and replacements
As seen from the chart at the bottom of the article,
for the condo building to remain functional, it requires cyclical
maintenance and replacement of its major components over time. By the
time a condo building reaches 40 to 50 years of age it will have gone
through several partial or complete retrofits, likely in stages.
Properly governed and managed condo complexes maintain amortization
funds - the necessary accumulation of monies over time for replacements
of the common elements without undue financial hardships.
Looking into a more distant future, more frequent and repetitive
replacements of the vital common elements will give rise to higher
maintenance fees in older complexes. In some cases, they will rise to
the point of becoming unaffordable to a majority of the unit owners. In
extreme circumstances, some condo buildings may end up being wound down
either voluntarily, by the unit owners, or through insolvency
proceedings commenced by creditors.
The problem of not being able to maintain adequate amortization
replacement funds may arise during times of economic slowdowns. Unit
owners may experience employment losses rendering them incapable of
contributing to necessary fiscal obligations of their condo complex.
This problem may escalate dramatically in poorly governed and/or
mismanaged complexes. History shows that buying a condo unit with a
small or no down payment presents a huge risk to financially weak unit
owners who may lose their units during economic hardships. If the
complex is composed of many such unit owners, the whole complex may
become underfunded and unable to carry on with the repairs and
replacements of its vital elements.
condo complexes’ financial well-being
It is for these reasons that every condo unit owner should be fully
apprised of their condo complexes’ financial well-being. The
take-it-for-granted assumption that, when you buy into a condo complex,
others will take (good) care of its governance and property management,
is dead wrong. Every condo unit owner is strongly advised to actively
participate in the day-to-day running of their condo complex by closely
monitoring and contributing their time when necessary, to all the
facets of its operation.
As condos have a finite life span, at least as economic factors
relative to their maintenance costs are concerned, the idea is to buy
into newer complexes, where their near future expenses and therefore
maintenance fees are prognosticated more accurately.
The same logic applies when selling a unit. Don’t wait until
maintenance fees become too high. If you do, chances are you are not
going to get your unit sold.
The physical
life-span
When it comes to physical longevity, the same formula applies to condos
as to other high rises, including apartment buildings. The
properly-funded and prudently-managed buildings may have a life-span of
over a hundred years, or even more. The poorly run, neglected and
mismanaged buildings usually end up going down sooner.
Their physical life span depends on quality of governance, prudence of
management policies, and the ability of owners to regularly look after
their expenses.
top
Adios, property ladder The Greater Fool— 14 Auguest 2014 (abridged)
Garth Turner
Virtually all new condo towers thrown up in the past decade have used
the window wall system of construction to separate the inside (where
you live) from the outside. It’s cheap (as opposed to a masonry
exterior), easy to install and quick. The downsides, however, are
immense. Walls made out of windows suck at energy efficiency. They’re
less durable and the seals always become permeable. Moisture inevitably
finds its way in or around. Compared to punched windows (where openings
in a brick or block wall are made), these exteriors are flimsy and over
time prone to air and water leakage.
And this could be the silent killer of the housing market. No, not just
condos. All housing.
Kesik I know this because of Ted Kesik. He’s a professor of
building science at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the
University of Toronto. Developers hate him. Condo salesguys would
happily drive their Panameras and A7s over his toes. And all those
horny little hipsters gobbling 500-square-foot units with great views
of the next building from their floor-to-ceiling windows should first
devour his work.
This week I was in touch with the prof.
a band-aid solution
“Most of these buildings are going to have serious problems in the next
ten years,” he says. “First owners will get special assessments for
$15,000 or $25,000 delivered to them, which they have to pay by law, to
fix these air and water problems. But that’s only a bandaid solution
for five or ten years. Then it all comes back.”
Eventually, says Kesik, all these glass condo buildings will have to be
reskinned, which not only costs w-a-y more than the recaulking and
sealing process, but requires they have to be evacuated. Even if done
on a floor-by-floor basis, condo owners will have to move themselves
and their stuff out for at least a month.
And this is the easy part. Worse is the financial hit.
nobody wants to buy leaky units
“The best case scenario for these owners is that they would, over time,
maybe get their money back,” the professor says. “But more likely,
values will spiral lower since nobody wants to buy leaky units. So when
people can’t sell, they’ll start to rent them out, and that’s when the
spiral really begins. I tell my students these are the places their
grandkids will be going to buy crack.”
And what will the impact be on society? How could something as
ubiquitous as glass walls come to impact everybody?
“We’ve taken the prime portions of our cities and filled them with this
typology, which will certainly lead us into this kind of spiral. This
is where things start to get really ugly. I keep trying to tell people
this, but the way euphoria works, they forget that somewhere in the
future there’s a reef.”
And, of course, it’s not just about condos, but rather the property
ladder.
the property ladder
“My Baby Boomer colleagues with houses think this doesn’t affect them,”
Kesik told me. “But the simple fact is these young people in condos
won’t be able to move up, because there’ll be no appreciation in their
units as values fall. So, you know what I tell my friends? I tell them,
if you’re ever gonna sell, then sell now. There won’t be a generation
coming along to buy them out, and prices will collapse. In fact, this
is something that is going to seriously affect two generations.”
Professor Kesik has written something to give your horny children.
Seriously. Here it is.
top
How will
our glass condo obsession affect us 20 years from now?
Another university professor, this one from Ryerson warns us that
window wall condo construction is going to result in high air
conditioning costs in the summer, cold units areas near the windows in
the winter and huge replacement costs starting in 10 to 15 years after
construction. http://bit.ly/11qDYf2