Commercial offices

It is common for some people to work from home. Some office workers and professionals can work from a computer sitting in their den or bedroom and they need to go to their employer's premises only a couple times a week. That is one of the joys of the computer-Internet age.

Not many would find an issue with this use of a private residential unit but when an owner of a residential unit buys the condo with the intent that it will be a commercial space, and it is furnished solely as a commercial office with employees coming up to the unit five days a week and clients walking into the condo on a regular basis then that is something else indeed.

There are law offices, mortgage brokers, investment firms, cleaning companies and even a funeral home running out of local residential units.

Although they do not pay commercial taxes on their office space, their offices do not meet municipal building code requirements for commercial properties, their customers and employees fill the Visitor Parking areas and the condo is not collecting HST on top of their common element fees, the business owners see nothing wrong with what they are doing.

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