Friday, March 12, 2010

Five More Years to Become Adequate

The Condominium Act has been changed to allow Condominiums registered before May 5, 2001 an additional five years until their reserve funds are required to become adequate (the previous version allowed ten years from the time they completed their first study under the Act).  For these Ontario Condominiums this generally means that any phasing-in of required increases should be completed by no later than 2019 (15 years after the last date that they could have completed a study under the 2001 Act).

However, it seems ill-advised to phase-in an increase related to a new tax over such a long period of time.  An increase this year can be clearly tied back to the implementation of HST.  Residents are likely to be less understanding of an increase that occurs in 2019 related to the then 9 year old tax. 

Boards might consider implementing the full impact of the HST this year, and taking advantage of the additional five years to phase-in any other required increases.

Of course, the changes to the Act did not clarify what "adequate" is, so this is still a moving target (see separate post regarding adequacy).

Condos registered since 2001 were left out of the edits.  This seems to be an oversight that will hopefully be addressed in the coming weeks.

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