The condo fees in my building jumped $350 in one year - here's what happened

I bought into a 15-year-old building near downtown Toronto back in 2021 when fees were $550 a month. Now they're sitting at $900 and I'm honestly worried about what next year looks like. The big change came when our board finally did a proper reserve fund study last spring and found out we were $200k short on major repairs like the garage concrete and roof. They had to bump fees hard to catch up, and I wish I had asked harder questions about the reserve fund before I bought in. Has anyone else seen a similar spike after a reserve fund study came back bad?

2 comments

2 Comments

black.laura1mo ago

$900 a month for a 15 year old building is actually pretty reasonable when you think about it. I bought into a 25 year old building back in 2017 and my fees started at $650 and now they're $1,200. That $350 jump you got is just a correction for years of underfunding. The board probably kept fees artificially low to attract buyers like you, and now reality hit. Honestly, if you can't handle a $350 increase then you bought into the wrong type of ownership. Condo fees always go up, that's just the cost of having someone else manage the roof and parking garage. You should be mad at the previous owners who voted for low fees, not the board doing their job with the study.

park.wyatt1mo ago

You should be mad at the previous owners who voted for low fees" - man, that hit home. My buddy bought into a building near downtown back in 2019, same situation, fees were like $400 a month and everyone thought they got a steal. Fast forward to last year, the roof started leaking into the parking garage, and they found out the reserve fund was basically empty because the old owners voted against a big assessment for like five years straight. Suddenly everyone's on the hook for $15,000 each. Even the board had no idea the fund was that bad because the old management company cooked the books. So yeah, I get being mad at the board, but sometimes the real culprits are the folks who sold out and moved away before the bills came due.