By Paula McCooey, The Ottawa Citizen
You'd think owning a 6,000-square-foot home would be the ultimate luxury, but it wasn't until Line Gravel and Michael Zigayer downsized to an 1,800-square-foot condominium that they started living the high life.
Last September, the couple sold their sprawling Hunt Club home to buy a condo on the 15th floor of the Riviera Towers on Riverside Drive.
It's all new territory for these suburbanites, as is the $686 condo fee they now pay every month. But they don't mind the extra expense because of the lifestyle that comes with it -- squash, racquetball and badminton courts, four tennis courts, a gym, party room, three saunas and two pools.
"It's almost a resort," gushes Gravel, 56, who hired Bernacki & Beaudry Design to renovate the two-bedroom-plus-den unit before moving in. "We have an inside and outside swimming pool. It's almost (like) hotel life where you have your own apartment in the hotel."
She admits there's something romantic about their new condo lifestyle. "It's like in the Agatha Christie books (where) people were living in hotels in those years," says Gravel of the time when Christie lived in Istanbul's famed Pera Palace Hotel where she wrote Murder on the Orient Express.
She points out that when she moved to Ottawa in the 1980s from the Northwest Territories where her husband worked with the Department of Justice, renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh was living at Ottawa's Fairmont Château Laurier with his wife Estrellita.
But what separates romantic hotel living from condo life is that condo owners are responsible for the building. If something breaks or needs replacing, it's the condo owners who foot the bill. Hotel guests can simply check out.
Depending on the building's amenities, monthly condo fees in Ottawa highrises range anywhere from about $200 to $1,300.
Town and garden homes usually have cheaper fees -- around eight cents a foot -- because they only need to cover the cost of snow removal and grass cutting.
Due to the large number of expensive amenities at the Riviera, Gravel and Zigayer's monthly condo fees work out to 38 cents a foot. They also include water, cable and parking.
There are approximately 850 condos in Ottawa with an average of 80 units per building. With so much variety available, it's impossible to calculate monthly condo fees based on an average cost per square foot, says Debbie Bellinger, real estate and condo lawyer and president of the Ottawa chapter of the Canadian Condominium Institute.
"A condo, like the Riviera, has a running track, rec centre, large banks of elevators, underground parking," says Bellinger. "A garden home community in Craig Henry has some landscaped space, some parking areas, but no amenities whatsoever. So you couldn't possibly compare."
What is important to know when buying a condo, she says, is what your monthly fees cover.
There are two components to condo fees: the operating budget used to pay monthly bills such as heat, hydro and maintenance of the building, and the reserve fund, kept for repair or replacement of major elements, like the roof, windows and doors.
Under the Condominium Act, condo corporations have always been required to create a reserve fund for unforeseen repairs. But by the 1980s and '90s, many condominiums built in the 1960s were showing their wear and owners were hit with big bills when they found out there wasn't enough money in their reserve fund to cover repairs.
To prevent these unwanted surprises, the law on reserve fund planning was revised 10 years ago to protect the owners because "there was no regulation of how much is enough," says Bellinger.
That amendment ultimately drove up condo fees.
"(The province) amended the condo act in 2000 and said condos must get studies done by engineers, architects or other qualified professionals," says Bellinger. "And they have to determine how much is enough for their reserve fund contribution. How much do they need to put away today to meet their obligations going forward over the next 30 years? And they have to follow those studies. And if they don't follow the studies, they have to tell everyone why they are not."
Karen Watts of Domicile says condo fees at the new One 3 One development at 131 Holland Ave. will cost 40 cents per square foot, with 30 per cent of that money allocated to the building's reserve fund. She says before the change in the law, that allocation may have been closer to 10 per cent.
Better safe than sorry, Watts says.
Gravel expects her condo fees will likely increase, not only because of the new 13-per-cent Harmonized Sales Tax that came into effect July 1, but because her building is 22 years old.
While dealing with her agent, Dominique Laframboise of Prudential Town Centre Realty Inc., Gravel discovered she needed to get a status certificate before buying. This certificate protects the consumer and reveals the state of the building and whether the reserve fund is adequate to cover repairs.
Marilyn Lincoln, a condo owner and author of the Condominium Self-Management Guide (available by e-mailing Lincoln at marilyncondoguide@hotmail.com) says the status certificate is paramount.
"It will tell you all the financial information that's very important," says Lincoln. "Like if there is any arrears on that unit; if the fees are set out according to the yearly budget and the reserve fund study. It will tell you what the fees are and if they expect any increases. They will tell you if there is a special assessment in the works."
For example, if the condo roof needs to be fixed, an assessment will be made to determine how much each unit will have to pay to fix it. Costs are based on the square footage of each unit.
In Gravel's case, the status certificate showed the Riveria needs new windows, and that was going to cost her $25,000 since there wasn't enough money in the reserve fund to cover the work. To avoid paying the hefty bill after moving in, Gravel and Zigayer reduced their offer, in the end, paying $390,000 for their new home.
"After that, (our condo board) will make sure they will have enough money in the reserve fund so probably they will have to increase the condo fees," says Gravel.
But she says the recreational conveniences of condo living is worth the added expense.
"My (16-year-old) daughter is doing competitive badminton, so all her friends are coming to our place to play badminton," says Gravel. "They go to the swimming pool after that, inside or outside, they go in the hot tub. They love coming to our place."
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