If you own a condo or are considering buying a condo, one option available to you is to become involved in the business of condo management.  Every condominium must have a Board of Directors to run the not-for-profit condominium corporation.

The next time your condominium corporation advertises a vacancy, you should ask yourself, "Should I get involved and join the Board of Directors for my condo?"

The Board has many duties, including but not limited to:

• Developing, maintaining and enforcing the policies of the corporation through bylaws, rules and regulations
• Managing the finances of the corporation
• Maintaining the property's exterior and interior
• Preserving the investment of the condo's various owners

Each month, each condo owner pays their condo or association fees.  These are used to maintain the property, including security, cleaning, elevator maintenance, landscaping, snow removal, underground parking, pool maintenance, and more.  This money also has to cover items such as insurance for the exterior of the building and the common elements or areas, utility charges for the common elements or areas. 

The Board must arrange for reserve fund studies to be done every few years.  These studies identify any areas of the building that will require maintenance on a larger scale, such as parging foundation or replacing the roof.  At least 10% of the association fees are kept for these expenses.

Occassionally, these large ticket items require more money than is kept in the 10% reserve fund account.  In these instances, a special levy is declared by the Board.

As you can see, joining the Board of Directors is a big responsibility.  There are pros and cons.  You get to have a hand in the decisions made in the building wher eyou are an owner, however, the decisions you make may not always be popular with everyone.  Ultimately, you need to decide if you want to have a say in what happens in your condo, or do you prefer to leave that to someone else?

Posted Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Condo Hotline
Tags: condo board, board of directors, condo decisions

Do you have rental properties?  Are you considering purchasing a condo as an investment property?

If you are considering buying a condo as a real estate investment, one of your many considerations should be the amount of rent you will charge each month.   A successful investment property will charge enough rent to cover the following:  

• Mortgage payment
• Insurance payment
• Any included utilities
• Common expense or association fee payment
• An amount for maintenance
• An amount for vacancy

The bottom line is that you, the investor, do not use any of your own money each month to cover the expenses of your investment.  In fact, once the rental payment has been received by you and all of the expenses have been paid, there should be some money left at the end of the day.  

The mortgage, insurance, and common expense payments are fixed amounts and easy to calculate.  If any utilities are included, the best way to estimate this cost would be to calculate the total utility payments for the previous year and divide by 12.  This amount should be covered each month by the monthly rent. 

The maintenance and vacancy amounts are a bit more difficult to calculate.  If you want to allot a fixed amount per month for incidental repairs and maintenance, add that amount to the monthly rent.  With respect to the vacancy amount referred to above, this refers to the number of months your unit may be vacant each year.  If a new tenant will move in each year, you may experience a vacancy rate of 1 month each year, if the tenancies do not run together.  If you think this will be the case, divide the rental amount by 12 and add this amount to the rent.  

Here is an example of the minimum amount of rent to be charged for a condo that was purchased for $250,000.00 in order to cover all potential expenses:  

Mortgage payment: $1,163.21 Based on $200,000 mortgage @ 5% interest

Insurance payment: $0.00 Tenant has own contents insurance

Utilities: $0.00 All utilities are paid by tenant

Common expense payment: $220.00

Maintenance: $100.00 Based on $1,200 per year

Vacancy amount: $123.60 Based on 1 month per year vacancy  

Total minimum monthly rental payment: $1,606.81  

Charging a minimum rent of $1,606.81 will easily cover all of your monthly expenses and your investment property should carry itself.  Once the mortgage has been paid in full, this monthly amount will become part of your profit on the investment property.  Once you have a few investment properties without mortgages, it is easy to see how you would have a very attractive monthly income from your condo investments.  

Happy investing!

Posted Tuesday, March 09, 2010 by Condo Hotline
Tags: condo rental,rental property,investment property

Are you looking for the perfect condo for you and your family?  If so, we have the perfect planning guide for you!

One of our most popular FREE products is the Condominium Complex Comparison Workbook.  This 25+ page workbook walks you through the process of selecting a condominium in your area - step by step.

First, you select a few areas within your geographic area - the city where you live.  You identify the reasons why you like each area.  What are the pros and cons of living in these areas?

Then, you review the complexes listed on CondoHotline.com for these identified areas.  Select a few that you think fit your needs.  Record infomration about each condo, including things like association fees, amenities, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, size, price, and more.

Once you have selected some condos that meet your criteria as the perfect home, the next step is to see if these condos are in your price range.

The next step in our workbook is to determine the overall monthly amount required to live in each of your selected condos, taking into consideration monthly payments such as:

• mortgage payments
• realty taxes
• association or condo fees
• insurance payments
• utility charges

Once you are finished with this section of the workbook, you have a short list of condos to choose from - each one meeting your specific needs and the needs of your family!

Simply contact your Realtor and arrange to see your short list of condos and make an offer on the perfect one!  It couldn't be any easier!

In order to get your copy of the Condominium Complex Comparison Workbook, simply email your Realtor on the CondoHotline.com and ask for it!  If your area is not yet represented on the CondoHotline.com, email help@condohotline.com and let us know. 

Posted Monday, March 08, 2010 by Condo Hotline
Tags

There are 2 sides to every story, and this debate is no different.

There are individuals and families who have purchased condominium units or townhomes for investment purposes.  In many cases, the owners have placed an ad in the newpaper or online and found a suitable couple or family to sign a lease and occupy their rental property.

Occassionally, a unit is rented to one or more college or university students, who each pay a percentage of the monthly rent.  At least one student has signed the lease, but all of the students living at the property may or may not be listed on the lease.

There are a growing number of law suits in the Ottawa area related to this very topic.  Adjacent property owners or owners in the same condominium complex are worried that some of the student tenants' activities and lack of maintenance may result in an unfavorable reaction from potential property owners who want to live in a community  of "single family residences".

The question of whether or not a student living arrangement is permitted appears to depend on the wording of the registered condominium Declaration.  The usual wording of a Declaration states that units can only be used as "single family residences".  Is this is the wording contained in your Declaration, the question then becomes whether or not the occupants are considered a "family". 

The problem is that many Declarations do not specify the definition of the word "family".  If there is a definition of the word "family", the case may seem more clear in that the occupants may have to be related.  Ultimately, the question of whether or not occupants of this nature are permitted to reside in a complex's unit depend on 2 things:

1. The wording of the Declaration; and
2. If the wording of the Declaration is favorable and specifies "single family residences", then is there a definition of the word "family".

There has been a decision in a recent case, Nipissing Condominium Corporation No. 4 v. Kilfoyl which ordered that the occupants of the units in that particular condo complex must be related.  The Court further specified that, since there was a clear definition of family in the condo's Declaration, the decision did not contravene Ontario's Human Rights Code.

This decision is currently in the appeals process.  Once the Ontario Court of Appeal has made its decision, we may or may not see a revision of the Declaration of many of Ontario's condominium corporation.

For more up to date information on Ottawa condominiums, contact the Renaud Otten Team at 613-288-2455.

Posted Sunday, March 07, 2010 by Bill Renaud
Tags: ottawa condos,ottawa condos for sale

Are you a Realtor with a large market share of the business in your geographic area?  Would you like to be your area's condominium expert?  CondoHotline.com is fast becoming North America's premiere site for all things condominium

When you sign up as a Realtor with CondoHotline.com, we guarantee that you will be the only Realtor in your geographic area on the site.  You will own your territory!  Only you will be able to upload your area's condo complexes to the site.

User love the CondoHotline because they can search for condo complexes.  Once they find a complex they like, we provide them with the following: 

• a detailed description
• amentities
• association/condo fees
• details of the builder
• when the building was built
• feature sheet
• by-laws
• rules and regulations
• floor plans
• units for sale, and
• recently sold units

We provide users with as much information as we possibly can - this is the value of the CondoHotline.com!

When you sign up with us, we provide you with 8 weeks of hands-on training.  Each week, you will receive video training showing you exactly how to develop your site as well as a supporting PDF document and a checklist to keep you on track.

Also, we will provide you with our Lead Generation email campaign as well as two of our most popular products:

1. The Condo Complex Comparison Workbook; and
2. The Condo Complex Quick Reference Chart

These two documents, combined with our email campaign, are great offers to give the leads that visit your site.  They prove that you are an expert in your field!

But wait....there's more!

After your site is set up, you need to generate traffic to it.  We are happy to help you with that as well.  We will provide you with 10 months of our Hotline Traffic Report.  Each month you will receive our video training, supplemented with a PDF document and checklist.

Finally, if all of this seems overwhelming, just give us a call at 1-800-313-0388 and we will set you up with one of our virtual assistants who will help you with the research required to set up your site in the quickest time possible!

Let's get started today!

Posted Sunday, March 07, 2010 by Condo Hotline
Tags: condos,find the perfect condo,buy a condo