10-29-2018, 01:08 PM
(10-29-2018, 11:39 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: As for condo fees, yes, I generally expect new places to be low balled. Fees are per sqft, but I think it's more enlightening to see the full cost. Our building might be a reasonable 60c/sqft, but our units are very large, meaning the costs are pretty high.
It's also difficult to compare fees, because the costs include different things, for example, in my building the fee includes hot and cold water, and cooling and heating (which are entirely water based--no compressor or heater), but not electricity (which runs the heating/cooling unit fan). How do you even break down that when comparing with a condo which has an electrically powered HVAC system.
And when looking at new units, estimating the utility costs is basically a crap shoot--even used ones, I still don't know how my lifestyle compares with the previous owner.
Yes, utilities coverage varies, but our building is the same as yours: I think that's a fairly common model, but certainly other models exist.
Now ones are generally lowballed, and jump up as soon as the condo corporation has to do its first reserve fund study. (Our reserve fund contributions are just over 25% of the total budget, and that's for a building that has not been neglected.) And that's really where the high fees at Eaton Lofts etc come from -- the reserve fund contributions were too low in the past, but once the corporations were forced to do the reserve fund studies, they had to start catching up. And that means higher fees.