Author: inboks

Greater Vancouver real estate has dodged the sharp downturn seen in cities like Toronto, but cracks are showing. Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board (GVR) data shows prices slipped again in November, hitting a new multi-year low. Sales remain soft, but the real story is inventory—now at its highest level for November in over a decade.  Vancouver Real Estate Prices Losing Their Grip? Greater Vancouver Real Estate: The Price of a Typical Home Across GVR. Source: GVR; CREA; Better Dwelling. Greater Vancouver home prices have been grinding lower, but not exactly crashing. The benchmark fell 0.3% (-$3,400) to $1,123,700 in November,…

Home prices in Vancouver have resisted the sharp downturn seen in Toronto, but that may be changing fast. Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board (GVREB) data shows prices made a sharp drop in January, with losses accelerating in recent months. A combination of weak demand and multi-year highs for inventory—and a new construction glut—signals more downward pressure ahead.  Greater Vancouver Home Prices Enter Second Wave of Correction The price of a typical home across Greater Vancouver.  Source: GVREB; CREA; Better Dwelling. The price of a typical home dropped substantially last month, shedding 1.2% (-$13.4k) to $1.10 million in January. Greater Vancouver…

If your condo was close enough to the recent wildfires that you packed a Go Bag, you may be safe from cancellation of your HOA’s master insurance policy, at least this year. But it probably won’t be because of the state’s insurance moratorium on cancellation of residential property insurance near the burn areas. At least not directly.   The Moratorium California state law SB 824 prohibits insurers from cancelling residential property insurance close to a fire perimeter for one year after a state of emergency has been declared. Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has issued a list of zip codes considered…

You may be dazzled by the perfect unit, but you need to take a hard look at the whole building. Chances are that underneath that gorgeously remodeled kitchen and hardwood floors, everything is old. According to my research—manipulating Zillow search terms—two-thirds of all condominium units for sale in LA County are built in 1990 or earlier. More than half of all units were built by 1980. Here are some things to help you choose a condo in Los Angeles, particularly in an older building. 1. Buildings get more expensive as they age. Leaks happen. Roofs need to be replaced periodically,…

Now that you know about the secret LADWP rate that may lower your common area electric bills, here’s how to apply for a rate change. Alas, the easy-to-use rate calculator has disappeared from the LADWP website. To find out if you might save money by switching, you’ll need to ask LADWP directly.  The good news, though, is that if you do ask, LADWP appears to be more willing than before to help you qualify for that rate. And the rate will be applied retroactively to the date of application–even, as reported to CondoWonk, almost two years later. Applying is easy.…

The secret that may lower your LADWP electricity rates for common area electric usage has proven its worth to our homeowner’s association (HOA). In the two years since our 26-unit building switched from a residential rate to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) electricity rate for the A-1 commercial category, our homeowner’s association (HOA) has saved $5,000 per year on common are electricity. That’s a drop of about 20%—without any change in our electricity consumption. The catch is that you have to know about the rate to ask for it. LADWP has confirmed to CondoWonk that it…

We have no murders in our Los Angeles condominium building, but we do have mysteries. Each case begins with something amiss. The security camera, unnoticed, witnessed the puzzling event. A board member, known here as The Great Rewinder, or GR, coaxes crucial information from the security camera, sole witness to the mystery. Here are the stories. All are true. The Heavy-Handed Houseguest Our gym is nothing fancy, but it does have a complete set of weights. Some weight sets jump sizes in five-pound increments, but this one brackets the ten pounders with a pair of eights and twelves as well.…

The former president of our HOA used to hold the latest reserve study aloft at a meeting and make a big show of ignoring it. The dues increase needed to fully fund reserves would be unthinkably large. Why even try? As it turned out, the number in the reserve study wasn’t big enough. The study, required to be performed every three years under California law, seemed thorough. Picky, even. It made digs at our lobby furniture, gym equipment and functional but dated-looking pool bathrooms and dutifully assigned a dollar value and estimated useful life to each. Yet despite this apparent thoroughness,…

The theory of reserve accounting is simple. Take the cost of the item (say, $100,000 for a roof) divide by its life expectancy (say, 20 years) and deposit that much per year into the reserve fund.  Repeat for every item on the list. There are some tweaks and adjustments, including interest and inflation, but that’s the basic idea. It works okay for new condominiums. In the early years, when few repairs are needed, it makes sense to put away money for painting and roof repair. But as buildings age, fully funded reserves, or even close to full funding, are rare.  Conventional…

When Surfside, Florida’s Champlain Towers collapsed in 2021, in a horrifying middle-of-the-night disaster that killed 98 residents, early reports focused on the problem of a volunteer board failing to act quickly enough to raise assessments and repair an aging building. The 126-unit condo, built in 1981, had undergone two inspections. In 2018, the consulting engineer warned of “major structural damage.” According to the New York Times, the report estimated that the repairs would cost more than $9 million. The same engineer performed a second study in 2021. By then, the problems had grown worse. It appears that neither study predicted…