Quote:
Originally Posted by Alpine
Honestly the newer towers in Metrotown will NOT age well. They are owned & occupied by a very large contingent of people from China (I am chinese so I know what we are about) who do not give 2 shits about building maintenance. They only care about low strata fees and I doubt they have done anything other than the bare minimum in maintenance. Honestly, I would find a condo with a strata full of middle aged/older white people. Your strata fees will be higher but they will ensure that all proactive & required building maintenance is completed on schedule.
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That's the truth right there. I used to live in a townhouse complex of 15 units with the majority of owners of Asian descent. Our strata fees were consistently the lowest among all the 4-5 other townhouse complexes in the neighbourhood.
I was on council for the two years I was living there. Every AGM, the council of four of us (all non-Asian except me but I consider myself very westernized) would increase strata fees to pad the CRF. And every year, all the other owners (all Asian) voted the budget down because they don't want to save up for bigger ticket maintenance items. Instead, what they have historically done is just do a special levy of thousands of dollars whenever some shit breaks.
I sold the place with a completion date in October... the last AGM I was at was September. Lo and behold the roof needed to be replaced and a special levy was approved. My portion was $6K and I had to pay that even though I was selling the following month. Fuck me.