First strata wind-up without unanimous vote goes to court
Business In Vancouver
By Glen Korstrom
20 January 2017
The strata corporation of this complex at the corner of Oak street and
West 12th Avenue, near Vancouver General Hospital, has agreed to sell
the complex for $21.5 million Google Street View
British Columbia Supreme Court is considering approving the first
petition to wind up a strata corporation since B.C. passed a law making
it easier for condominium owners to sell their complexes without
achieving a unanimous vote of all owners.
Owners of units at 2777 Oak Street, which is at the corner of West 12th
Avenue, want the court to approve the sale of their three-storey,
30-unit, 44-year-old, wood-frame building to a numbered company for
$21.5 million.
That is more than twice the site’s 2016 assessed value of $10,630,300.
Two owners opposed the sale in a November 8 vote, making the vote 93.33% in favour.
Panagiota Kravariotis, who is an owner who voted in favour of the sale,
told Business in Vancouver that the two holdouts were willing to sell
but wanted “a lot” more money.
“For me it’s a good deal,” she said. “I’ve been living here 22 years.”
The B.C. government’s Bill 40 went into effect last July and lowered
the legal threshold required for a vote to dissolve a strata
corporation to 80%, down from what was unanimous consent.
The change spurred a flurry of interest among members of dozens of
strata corporations that own buildings that are becoming more expensive
to maintain.
This was the case at 2777 Oak Street, which is also known as Twelve Oaks.
“The Twelve Oaks strata is facing increasing capital expenditures to
maintain and repair the building and physical infrastructure,” noted a
court filing obtained by BIV.
The petition was filed in December but two of the owners were
accidentally left out and were not served. That caused a delay. The
case is adjourned until February 3.
The Twelve Oaks’s November 8 vote is now believed to be the first one
to see owners vote successfully to wind up their strata since Bill 40
went into effect.
BIV reported last month on a separate strata corporation, which
successfully held a vote on December 12 to wind itself up by voting
more than 80% in favour. BIV was told by multiple sources at the time
that this was the first such vote of a strata corporation. It turns out
that it was not, however, given that Twelve Oaks voted to dissolve its
strata more than one month earlier.
The strata corporation that held its vote on December 12 has yet to
file for court approval so its identity is not yet publicly accessible.
Strata corporations have 60 days following the vote to file for court
approval, which is not a rubber stamp.
Courts consider the hardship that the owners who voted against the wind-up might face.
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Court delays plague strata wind-up attempt
Business Vancouver
By Glen Korstrom
20 February 2017
A petition to wind up a strata corporation and allow a 30-unit
residential building to be sold to a numbered company for $21.5
million, despite opposition from two owners, has been mired in court
delays since it was filed on December 14.
A judge was originally set to hear the petition on February 3 but the
case was adjourned until February 20. The case is now adjourned again,
until March 20, because four of the owners in the complex are appealing
their property assessments.
“They’re in the odd position of appealing their assessments to try to
have them go up,” said Lawson Lundell partner Peter Roberts, whose firm
filed the petition for owners at Twelve Oaks, or 2777 Oak Street, which
is at the corner of West 12th Avenue.
“The property assessment review panel is supposed to make a decision by March 15.”
This case is significant because it is the first petition to wind up a
strata corporation since B.C. passed a law, known as Bill 40, making it
easier for condominium owners to sell their complexes without achieving
a unanimous vote of all owners. The new law allows owners in strata
corporations to vote by an 80% majority in order to have the attempt to
wind up the strata corporation head to court for a judge's approval.
The judge assesses whether the sale would be significantly unfair to
any of the owners who oppose the sale and may rule that the sale is not
able to take place.
Business in Vancouver first reported on this case in January.
Twelve Oaks' combined 2016 assessed value is $10,630,300, which is less
than half what the numbered company has offered to pay for the
three-storey, wood-frame building that sits on a 18,753-square-foot
corner lot.
Exactly how proceeds are divvied up after strata corporations
successfully wind up is determined by laws and based largely on the age
of the building.
In this case, the method of dividing up the proceeds for the 1973-built
Twelve Oaks project is based on the assessed values of the units.
Condominium buildings built between August 1974 and July 2000 have a
schedule of “interest upon destruction” in their strata plans.
That schedule sets out the relative value of each strata unit based on
a developer’s estimate of that unit’s value back when the building was
built. BIV reported on these intricacies in December.
That is why proceeds at the Brandywine project in Coquitlam, which BIV
covered last week, are set to be divided up based on arbitrary
assessments that a developer made when the project was built in 1978.
That case is also waiting to be heard in court.
Some Brandywine owners told BIV that they are opposed to selling their
unit in the wind-up in part because they would receive more money if
the proceeds were divided up based on square footage or assessed values.
Anthem Properties wants to spend $32 million to buy the 58-unit
Brandywine project. It hopes to get the city's approval to build
hundreds of units on the site.
The only recent major sale of a condominium project where there was no
unanimity among owners was at Seymour Estates in North Vancouver.
Anthem Properties bought that site for $51 million in a deal that
closed in January.
Seymour Estates, however, did not involve a strata corporation but
rather a common-law condominium corporation – an ownership structure
that the B.C. government has banned for decades.
Strata corporations involve multiple owners with each owning a separate
title to a unit. In common-law condominium corporations, owners each
own a share of a single legal entity that owns the entire site.
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