Every now and again on our blog a debate about new vs resale pops up. One such discussion relating to condos the other day made a light bulb in my head go off.
In the recent past there have been plenty of law suits from recently completed condo projects; the new owners of projects around Edmonton are suing the devlopers who built the projects. It doesn’t take me long to think of a few such projects. These law suits take years to get sorted out…
These law suits occured in an environment where the builders should have been able to build a decent project (wages were reasonable, tradespeople were well trained and available to work, projects went up in a reasonable timeframe, materials were affordable etc). Overall it was a great environment to build a complex (I'm talking about pre-2006) but there were still problems – leaky roofs, flooded parkades, mis-representing specs, building code issues etc…
Which brings me back to the light bulb that went off… What about those projects that were put up at the heat of the market, when skilled labour was hard to find and keep? And now, what about those projects that were conceived started with different revenue projections? With the current environment such that it is, will there be more developers being sued?
Time will tell, but I fully expect to see more statements of claims listed in the condo document packages of recently built complexes in the near future.
Maybe there is something to be said for the tried and true complexes that have been around for awhile and have (hopefully) their major issues behind them.
