TD Canada Trust Condo Poll Results – Owners Confuse Fees with Rent

TD Canada Trust’s annual Condo Poll results have been released for 2012, and there are some interesting findings in the four releases they have published:

• Canadians don’t mind paying for the perks of condo living (link)
• Maintenance-free living but can Calgarians really relax in their condos? (link)
• Torontonians worry about affording their mortgage – but many don’t mind paying for the perks of condo living (link)
• More affordable than a house: Condos seen as an attractive option in Vancouver’s expensive real estate market (link)

The interesting point for me

More than one-quarter (28%) of Vancouver condo dwellers say that their monthly strata fees make it feel like they are still paying rent, so they are saving up to buy a home without set monthly maintenance fees.

Condo, Strata, and HOA fees are not rent, but the monthly payments required to maintain the property that you have purchased. There is no concept of profit with monthly condominium fees unlike rent. The collection of monthly condominium fees is based off of a budget that is designed to be as close to actual cost as can be forecasted.

There is another focus about paying maintenance vs. paying rent. With rent – you have an owner that looks to maximize revenue and that usually includes significant controls on expenditure. Every penny provided to update or maintain the property is an out of pocket cost for a landlord.

With condominiums, you are paying (usually, unless the board is unusual) for proactive and ongoing maintenance and work designed to maintain the common property and the corporation. While owners may not like paying fees (35% of poll respondents want fees $200/month or less, 44% are ok with fees up to $400/month, and 17% with fees up to $800/month), they should realize that instead of lining the pockets of a landlord they are lining their own pockets by maintaining the condominium corporation.

I hope that helps understanding the difference between rent and condominium fees.

Toronto and Singapore Experience the Shoebox Condo

Some trends cover the world, but the underlying reasons may be different. For example, Singapore and Toronto both are experiencing a surge in shoebox condos (500 sqf or less) but for significantly different reasons.

With Singapore, prices on condominiums are averaging $1185USD/sqf – putting the price of anything lager than shoebox well outside the financial means of most local residents.

In Toronto, price is not nearly as sensitive (running about $630USD/sqf), but tax legislation is pushing units to list at $390k or less or suffer, and one bedroom condominiums now make up almost 60% of new construction. This forces smaller shoebox units to be built in order help create consumer choice in a market that prefers one bedroom condominiums.

In both cases though – Singapore and Toronto are both seeing massive preconstruction sales to investors and foreign buyers. This is likely a strong incentive to build shoebox condominiums, as they become more “affordable investments” and require smaller capital down. If that’s the case, shoebox condominiums are creating a new form of downtown transient population – encouraging renters to populate the cores of each city.

I live in an 1150 sqf 2 bedroom condo – with wife and 2 cats. At 500 sqf, one of those would have to go! (I love you hunny!)

How Much Can I Rent My Condo For

The easy answer is “whatever a tenant is willing to pay.” That answer though makes it difficult as an owner to predict the average rent that can be charged over a period of 5 or 10 years, and thereby determine if it is economically feasible to rent their unit, or if they should simply sell.

It’s an important decision – because margins on rentals can be very thin if the unit is highly mortgaged.

Certainly part of the process is to check what similar units are renting for, near where your unit exists. Maybe it also includes looking at some historical rental data. But good planning usually involves a bit of a formula.

There are two formulas – one on average income, and one on the unit price.

Average Income

As an owner, look at the average income your tenant may have. When we rented our unit – a two bedroom – we assumed a young single male with either a female or male roommate. In Canada for 2009 A non-elderly male (average) and a non-elderly female (average) make 40,600 and 35,800 respectively. Combined they would have 76,400 in income (both before tax).

The maximum a person should effectively pay in rent (including utilities) is 30% pre-tax. Because our condominium includes water, waste and electricity in the condominium fee, we don’t have to factor those into the 30%. So from an average income perspective, we should be able to charge about 1910/month. This turned out to be well over what the local market turned out to be – probably because other units don’t include electric, and maybe we are thinking that one or both might be students, which might reduce the (average to non-earner) income. If we change the female to non-earner, her income goes to 18,100 – or now a total income of 58700. 30% of that number is $1467.50/month, and if you subtract utilities (to be competitive with the market) then you get about $1387.50/month expected rent.

Unit Price

There is a rule of thumb that indicates if the cost of the unit is 15x or less the rental cost (yearly basis), then people will migrate from renting to buying. If the unit is 16x or more the rental cost people will continue renting. The smaller the percentage of the unit they pay per year, the better the odds of renting the unit. The sweet spot seems to be 16x or higher cost:rental makes better economic sense.

Assuming that we want to charge the highest rent, but still have it make worthwhile sense to a renter, we want to charge a rent that is 1/16 the cost of the unit. If we were desperate to rent the unit, we might charge 1/17 or even 1/21 of the cost – both being much more attractive to a renter. The city of Calgary places our Fair Market Value at $248,000. So our maximized rent would be 248,000 / 12 (months) / 16 (our ratio) = $1291. If we subtract utilities, we would be renting at $1211/month.

Which Formula Works

We are successfully renting our unit at $1200/month. It’s in line with the other local rents, and is competitive for both the city and the rental market (which changes as rental occupancy goes up and down). From a personal perspective, the Unit Price approach seems to be easy and very close to the actual rental amount. We should be aware though that if the rental market softens, we could expect to see rental rates at lower then 1/16 – if it was at 1/19, then the market would likely only support $1007 rent (or 17% cheaper), something we should be aware of.

The income ratio tells us the type of people we are likely going to be interviewing – with a pre-tax income of rent X 12 / .3 or in our case (at $1200) about $48,000 before tax.

Taking Things For Granted By Being In The Industry

In my role as President of CCI South Alberta, I sometimes get emails to answer. Recently I received an email from a person who is planning to move to Calgary and was concerned that there is no method of condominium contribution control in Alberta.

They sent me four MLS listings, for different units in the same complex, and they were aggravated that the contributions were wildly different between units (varying from $400 to $505/month). Indeed, the person expressed that condominium owners “need at much protection as tenants” to prevent abusive condominium fees.

It took me a few minutes to realize that the person was equating living in a condominium to renting, and that the condominium fee was looked at as rent. They also didn’t realize that on a square foot basis, the monthly contributions only varied by a maximum of 1.5 cents/sq. foot/month. There was no connection that a larger unit may pay more in condominium contributions.

Being in the industry it seems silly that a person equates contributions to rent, and that the size of your unit has an impact on the amount of the contribution. I guess I would call that having industry blinders.

What the letter really hit home with – that people in the condominium industry need to work a lot harder to explain, express, and defined the basic tenants of condominium to the general public. When we howl to the press about the issues of condominium we assume that people understand what we mean by the word condominium. But they don’t, and we cannot assume any more that they do understand. We need to do more work at a very fundamental awareness level to the general public. Only then will our issues be understood, and we will have a change to get the support we need from the general public in building a better condominium experience.