The Shortfall.

Your fees went up, or a special assessment arrived, and nobody has properly explained why.

Here is what most Ontario condo owners never find out.

Your corporation is required by law to have a reserve fund study, and to update it every three years. That document names the components. It names the years. It names the dollars. And it states plainly whether what the corporation is currently contributing is enough.

So the analysis predicting your next special assessment already exists, it is never more than three years old, and you are entitled to it.

Almost no owner asks.

The other thing worth knowing. A board under pressure to keep fees down has one easy lever: hold the reserve contribution flat while operating costs rise. Fees look controlled. The reserve quietly falls behind. Nothing appears wrong for years - until a garage or a roof arrives and the owners who happen to be there pay for a decision taken by a board that has long since moved on.

If your corporation is contributing less than its study recommends, that is the single most important fact about its finances. This book shows you how to find out.

• Standard, common elements, vacant land, phased - which corporation are you actually in?
• If you own a freehold house and pay condo fees, why all of this still applies to you
• Reading the budget, and the one line that predicts the next eight years
• The reserve fund study, and the gap between what it recommends and what is paid
• How a special assessment actually happens, and the five options a board has
• Borrowing instead of assessing - the alternative many boards do not know exists
• Your records rights, and the prescribed form that gets an answer
• The insurance deductible, chargebacks, and loss assessment coverage
• The Condominium Authority Tribunal - online, low cost, built for owners without lawyers
• What a buyer will find in your status certificate when you sell

Twenty chapters in plain English, with a one-page owner's checklist, a glossary, and template letters for requesting the reserve study, questioning an assessment, and reporting water damage.

Written by someone who has served on the boards that run apartment buildings since 2019, and who has written handbooks on shared-ownership housing for Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Florida, California and New York. Researched against Ontario law, not adapted from somewhere else.

General information only. Not legal or financial advice.