Biggest challenge for owners?

Rogue developers and fraudulent property managers might generate more headlines, but for Canadian co-owners the biggest challenge is living with their own neighbours, advocates for condo boards of directors say.

“Every province has told us that the single biggest issue they’re dealing with is how to more effectively resolve – and I mean both time-wise and money – disputes between owners,” said Toronto attorney Armand Conant, who heads the condo department of Shibley Righton LLP.

Coming up with an alternative to the courts to resolve owners’ disagreements is on lawmakers’ minds in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta, which are planning to overhaul their condo laws.

Quebec and Alberta are already planning to hold public consultations, while the Ontario Consumer Services Department has moved closer to launching its own reforms, without committing to a specific date.

“We support modernizing the (Ontario Condominium) Act and will be reviewing the legislation to see how it could better reflect the growth of condominium housing and the lessons learned over the last decade,” a Consumer Services spokesperson told The Gazette in an email.

With more than 28,000 sales of new units in 2011, Toronto has emerged as the condo construction capital of North America and critics argue the province’s 11-year-old laws haven’t kept up with the housing boom.

“The legislation is in constant need of change,” said Toronto lawyer Audrey Loeb.

“As quickly as government changes the legislation, people find holes.”

Ontario’s laws – while inspiring proposals to better protect Quebec buyers of new condos – have failed to provide owners with an affordable recourse for settling disputes.

In certain instances, like disagreements over noise, Ontario condo owners are required to seek mediation and arbitration, but these alternatives haven’t worked because of the expense. Not only do owners pay for their own lawyers but the cost of the adjudicators, with the price of an arbitrator estimated at about $400 an hour.

“In certain limited instances it’s been wonderful, but it hasn’t been the panacea they thought it would be,” said Conant, who chairs the joint legislative committee of the Canadian Condominium Institute’s Toronto chapter and the Association of Condominium Managers of Ontario.

Alternatives are being floated. Quebec notaries have suggested creating a “Régie de la Copropriété,” or type of condo tribunal to hear disputes. Conant points to a change in Nova Scotia’s laws last fall that created a new Condominium Dispute Officer to hear owners’ disagreements over issues like noise, for a $114 application fee.

But that might not work for Ontario, he noted. Coming up with that third model, in addition to mediation and the courts, “is probably the single biggest thing that we have to do.”