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Real Estate Minute
What Is “Exclusive Use” In A Toronto Condo?
If you’re considering buying your first Toronto condo, you might feel bombarded by a number of different terms that relate to condo ownership – which you’ve never heard before.
What does "exclusive use" mean?
“Exclusive use” might be one of those terms. Here are a series of explanations that might help you better understand exclusive use in a Toronto condo.
Your condominium is “owned” by you. You do not own other areas of the building.
Common elements are everything not owned by you, including the heating and air conditioning systems, the swimming pool, walkways, gardens, garages and lobbies – you share these with other owners in your condo building, and your monthly maintenance fees help pay for their up keep.
Exclusive use refers to exclusive use common elements, which are elements only used by you specifically, but not actually owned by you in the sense that your condominium unit is owned by you. These elements include your balcony or terrace, storage locker and your parking space (although in some buildings you may actually own you parking space, and can sell it later.)
All of the specific definitions that apply to a condominium building (as in, what in that building is exclusive use or a common element) are found in the condominium declaration – this document is extremely important, but often written in complicated legalese. Your Toronto real estate agent can help you look it over!
Your Toronto Condo Declaration: What It Means
Your Toronto condo declaration contains all the information about your condominium suite and the building itself, including what is “exclusive use” (what is available for use exclusively to you, but not actually owned by you, such as your locker, balcony and sometimes parking spot), the boundaries of your condominium suite and rules such as whether or not pets are allowed, noise and what can be done in your suite with regards to physical changes or alterations.
Condo buildings have an obligation to enforce the rules set out in the condo declaration.
A condo declaration is something you really need to read, although unfortunately they are written by lawyers and can be difficult to understand – it might be useful to have your Toronto real estate agent or a real estate lawyer help you look it over so you know more about a condominium and the condo building before you buy it.
Condo buildings have a legal obligation to enforce the rules set out in the condominium declaration. In fact, they have a legal obligation to enforce the rules all the time for everyone, and not just enforce them against certain people. This is why some people are able to sneak pets into a “no pets” condo – if the rules aren’t enforced in general, it’s not likely the condo will get a ruling in their favour if they take you to court over it.
Toronto real estate lawyer Bob Aaron’s latest Toronto Star column deals with the enforcement of condominium declaration rules in court, and what can happen when the condominium building doesn’t bother to enforce them all of the time. It’s definitely worth a read if you live in a condo or are considering downtown Toronto condo living!
Toronto Condos Keep Breaking Records Through 2011 To 2012
According to this article in the Toronto Star, the Toronto condo market has continued to break records through 2011 and even already into 2012.
2011 saw a number of records for Toronto condo construction and sales:
132 Toronto condo projects are currently under construction - a world record.
-The announcement of the tallest residential tower in Toronto at 75 storeys.
-The smallest condo suites in Toronto with two 270-square-foot condos in motion for the King Street West DNA condos project by Canderel.
-High-rise condo sales in the 905 area code surpassing sales in the 416 area code for the first time ever in August.
-Sales in the range of 27,000 far outshot initial predictions, while about 20,000 are predicted for by Ben Myers of condo research company Urbanation.
And already, Toronto holds the world record for the most high rises under construction in 2012 with 132.
Across Canada, about 11 per cent of homeowners live in condominiums, while more than twice that number live in condos in the city of Toronto.
Downtown Toronto Condo Price Appreciation Matches The Overall Market
In December, downtown condo average sale prices were up 5.2% in C01, west of Yonge and south of Bloor and up by 5.6% in C08 east of Yonge and south of Bloor compared to one year ago.
When you compare year-over-year average numbers, both condo areas tracked the overall market average quite well… The C01 annual appreciation number was 7.1% – slightly below the TREB average and the C08 appreciation came in one percent over the average at 8.9%.
These numbers seem to put to rest the mistaken belief that the downtown Toronto condo market is going to disintegrate and prices are going to freefall – the evidence just does NOT point to that at all !! These sales numbers show us that whenever new inventory does come on the market, it’s being absorbed within a 33-37 day marketing period on average.
Lower inventories in both TREB districts compared to November caused the C01 ratio of sales-to-listings to be 26.7%, squarely in neutral market territory and the C08 ratio being a moderate seller’s market 37.7%.
We expect there will be more new condo buildings completed and occupied in the first two quarters of 2012 so watch for inventory to increase slightly both east and west of Yonge.
Watch the video below for the full report.
Toronto Condo Rental Restrictions
One decision Toronto condo buyers have to make when choosing a building or a unit in any existing building is whether to buy a condominium in a building with rental restrictions.
Not all condos allow renters in Toronto.
Rental restrictions mean that a building restricts the number of rentals allowed in a building or event outright prohibits them. This results in a condominium building that is comprised of all or mostly condo owners instead.
In most cases, choosing a condo based on this is simply a personal choice. Owners tend to create a sense of community and can often take more pride in their living situation than renters, who are not responsible for keeping common areas clean or fixing things because their landlord handles it. Of course, some renters are stellar and everyone is different, but it may be something to consider when choosing a condominium in Toronto.
Before you start shopping for a new or resale condominium, speak to your Toronto real estate agent about your wants and needs regarding the condo you’ll choose, and tell them how you feel about rental restrictions. They will be able to find out the building’s policies on rentals or might even know them already and be able to steer you towards a condominium you’ll love living in.
For more information, read this great article in Moneyville on rental restrictions in condos.
