Let's Negotiate the Maintenance Fees - Toronto Condo

In a recent Star Article the Author suggested that Maintenance Fees can be negotiated.

A Condo Building like a house needs operating expenses;
Heat, Hydro, Water, Garbage, Sewage are all controlled by the City or Province.

Now you have security, concierge, cleaning, repairs and maintenance.  IE elevators, gates, sidewalks, door openers, BBQ's etc.

What expenses will you cut?

Provincial requirements, like an adequate reserve fund to cover major maintenance and repairs, are also a major fixed cost, says Eracles, and those costs could increase further as the province revamps the Condominium Act.
But Gagliano strongly disagrees.
What’s needed, he stresses, are more condo boards with “the collective courage required to make difficult decisions” like reducing staff. (Selvagio points out that Indigo has 24-hour security, at owners’ insistence.)
Gagliano went line-by-line through The Toy Factory’s reserve fund, along with engineers who have to give it final approval, questioning every assumption of future costs, some far beyond a reasonable rate of inflation.  http://www.thestar.com/business/2015/02/13/the-real-costs-of-maintenance-fees.html

When a Building is finished, the owners move in and create the new condo Board. The New building OWNER's then commission a performance audit. Simply put. Did they deliver what we committed to purchase and is anything defective? The cash flow summary is what will break or need replacement in the next 30 years and where will that money come from. 

Would I buy a building that's 10 years old with ZERO reserve because some LUGGANS negotiated their way down with the licensed and regulated engineers?  [because nothing ever goes wrong......] 

You can answer that for yourselves. The reserve fund is an asset of the condo owners.


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