Downtown condo dwellers have difficult time living in confinement
Confinement has been tough for everyone, but it’s particularly trying if you happen to live in a small condo in one of the big towers downtown. Often enough, these condo owners are people who in normal times spent a lot of time outside their home, at work, cafés, bars, restaurants and gyms.
Then all of a sudden the COVID-19 crisis hit and all those things were closed and, worse yet, the common areas in the condo buildings — like terraces and gyms — were all shut down as well.
There is lots of grumbling from condo owners, said Laurie Murphy, president of Gestion Griffin, which manages the common areas in 20 condo buildings in Montreal.
“People who live (in condos) in the city, they’re not very often at home,” said Murphy. “They’d go out and do their activities and now they ’re stuck at home. People complain that their neighbour is playing an instrument, that their TV or music is too loud. People are trying to do like they do in Italy and sing off their balconies.
“So there’s a lot of complaints we’re getting from people. It might be something that was happening before but they weren’t there to notice it. But now everyone’s at home and kind of on edge a bit. So there’s been a lot of management of complaints.”
There are a fair number of smaller condos in Montreal, some even less than 400 square feet.
“People were used to going to the urban lounge (in the building) to work, and now they’re stuck between their walls,” said Murphy.
Murphy also said there are issues when, for example, everyone goes on online at 8 p.m. to watch Netflix and so the internet connection is slower in the building. Similarly, with everyone at home, the hot water can get used up quicker.
“Buildings are made to have people coming in and out, so it’s been challenging to explain to people that they all need to respect each other,” said Murphy.
Patrice Groleau, owner of real-estate agency Mcgill Immobilier and the Quebec branch of Engel & Völkers, said one impact of the coronavirus crisis is people may start wanting a little extra space in their condos because there will be much more working from home going on.
“I think there will be a new demand for another room. People never imagined that they’d have to stay in their little 350-square-foot for two months straight.”
The other big change for downtown condos is that the cleaning arrangements have been stepped up to make sure that door handles, mailboxes, elevator buttons, entrances to garbage chutes and so on are wiped down far more frequently. That used to be done once or twice a day and is now done six to eight times a day, said Murphy from Gestion Griffin. The condo managers have also had to install hand sanitizers at the entrances and in the garages, and there’s a constant process of providing information about COVID-19 regulations to the condo owners.
There have been very few cases of COVID-19 in the 20 buildings managed by Gestion Griffin. Murphy said there have been four reported cases and her company manages buildings containing around 2,000 condos.