Paying for unit repairs

It is not unusual for condominiums to use operating funds and reserve funds to pay for the maintenance and replacements for items that are the unit owners responsibility.

New & older condos
In many new condo towers, the declaration states that the unit owners own the fan coils and the dryer vents and must maintain them and pay for replacements.

In practice however, far too many owners will not maintain their fan coils so after a few years of neglect, water leaks, that damage the units below, are common in some buildings.

Many owners will not clean their clothes dryer vents. Clogged vents can easily catch on fire by the hot air exhausted by the dryer.

The solution
It depends on the condo.

Some boards send notices to the residents stating that it is their responsibility to maintain their fan coils and dryer vents and if their failure to do so creates a flood or fire, they will be responsible to pay for all damages to the other units and the common elements. (The owners better have insurance.)

Other condos will have contractors come into the units on a regular basis to perform regular maintenance on these two items and the owners must pay for this service. Alternatively, the owners must show management documentation proving that they had the maintenance done.

The remainder of the condo corporations hire and pay contractors to service all the fan coils and dryer vents out of the operating funds.

Older condos
In many older condominiums, the declaration states that the windows belong to the unit owner and are not common elements. Therefore when the windows need replacing, the owner needs to pay for the replacements.

This may work better in townhouses than apartment towers but having the owners pay for their windows were common to both.

However, in practice it did not work well as many owners would not replace their windows and there were disputes on what kind of windows the board would allow to be installed.

The concern
Make sure that the corporation has made allowances in the budget to pay for this maintenance in the operating fund and if fan coils or windows are going to be replaced by the corporation, that the cost of these items are included in the Reserve Fund Study.

This means that the owners should be paying for this extra maintenance and replacements through higher monthly fees. Sounds like common sense but common sense is not that common.

One townhouse corporation in the GTA pays for the replacement of windows. In a five year period, they paid $214,918 for windows. The money came out of its reserve funds.

Door & window replacements

2012	2011	2010	2009	2008	Total
$60,399	93,220	26,618	18,903	15,778	$214,918

The problems is that the cost of replacing windows was not included in the Reserve Fund Study, nor was it part of the annual budgets, so replacing the windows depleted the reserve funds.

To cover herself, the auditor added this note in the back of the financial statements.

Reserve fund expenditures included amounts incurred on window replacements and front yard maintenance costs. These costs according to the Corporation's Declaration should be the owner's responsibility, but the corporation has been habitually looking after. The Corporation is undertaking legal proceedings to amend and update the Corporation's Declaration to make window replacement and front yard maintenance the responsibility of the Corporation.

Similar notes to this were written for the previous five years and the corporation never did get around to having the declaration changed.

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