Neighbour disputes can leave you living in condo hell: Maclean’s

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Living in a condo can have its appeal: you’ve got nearby neighbours and no lawn to mow or garden to tend.

But the experience is not always pleasant; a report in MacLean’s Magazine looks at the nightmares of condo living.

Tamsin McMahon with Maclean’s says disagreements sometimes blow up into big, bitter battles because of the way condo living is structured.

She explains mini governments are formed, and in some cases, they work. But in others, they become like little dictatorships.

“There are big lawsuits over… people flushing the toilet in the middle of the night and the neighbour can hear them, there’s human rights complaints over whether they can have a dog,” says McMahon.

McMahon adds for many people, condos are the only option, especially if you’re a first-time home buyer or trying to move to a city like Vancouver from a less expensive place.

She says that means a lot of people who don’t suit condo living end up in them anyway.

“In reality, a condo is kind of a cross between a private house and an apartment. There’s a fair amount of collective responsibilities, you share many roles with your neighbours, you share a lot of household finances with your neighbours and — not surprisingly — that leads to a lot of conflict in condos. So, there’s neighbour disputes which we’ve had even before condos, but they escalate to sometimes a crazy level.”

McMahon says in a dispute at a seniors condo in Abbotsford, eggs were thrown at windows, someone apparently hid in the backseat of a car to secretly record his neighbour, and someone was accused of breaking a neighbour’s arm.

She advises if you’re looking to move into a condo, do your research on each building you’re considering.

“Maybe you can kind of get a status certificate or something and look at the reserve fund that the condo might have,” she suggests. “I would say… at board minutes, talk to people, ask about some of the issues. I would even go down to the courts and see if there’s any lawsuits filed, because you’d be surprised how many kind of lawsuits there are involving condos.”

“Get a sense of what life is like in that particular building because it’s a huge investment for you. You’re spending many hours of your day there; you need to know if this is a building that’s going to suit your lifestyle,” she adds.