Saturday, May 24, 2014

Leaky condo crisis rears its head again in B.C.

Leaky condo crisis rears its head again in B.C.: Evidence of a second wave in British Columbia’s leaky-condo crisis is beginning to emerge, 15 years after the first one subsided.

It is becoming more apparent as condo strata corporations prepare mandated depreciation reports on their buildings. That process is forcing them to own up to the condition of their properties and the shortcomings of maintenance programs for structures that weren’t fixed in the first wave of repairs.

Some are buildings that haven’t started leaking until recently, or that owners patched over instead of repairing their underlying defects.

There are still potentially thousands of faulty units that were built during the so-called “leaky-condo” period — from 1982-99 — which were never repaired, but figures on how many have been fixed are difficult to come by.

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The quest for a waterproof condo continues in the rainy lands north of the border. This story like its counterpart in the U.S. has been playing out for decades, drip by drip, drop by drop.