Condo craziness

Over the past 20 years I've gotten the chance to participate in the design and construction of six houses and three office spaces.  As a guy who loved to build stage sets as a kid, thought Heathkits were cool and now watches every geeky show on NGC and Discovery, you can understand why I think pouring over plans and working with builders can be fun.  That is until we decided to buy a new condo under construction.

Over my building history we've had the chance to make every selection down to the light switches and the process has gone quite well.  Each time is a learning experience, and you discover that there are compromises that sometimes need to be made.  You know the big three -- quality, service and price.

In any given situation the old axiom is that you get to pick two, because generally, something has to slip.  I've now learned that working with a condo developer means you have to throw all three out the window.

We've purchased a unit in the beautiful new Zenith condos right next to the Guthrie - www.zenithcondos.com.  The developer is George Sherman and the contractor is BorSon.

The problem started after the paperwork was signed and they get into the selections process.  You quickly realize that, not only are the "base" selections not what you would normally choose, but that a lot of the profit for the developer comes from getting you to select other items.

For example, there's a price sheet for making electrical changes.  No problem, right?  How much to add a plug -- it's $300+.  Oh, let's make that a dimmer.  That'll be 400% more then if you just threw the switch in yourself.  Would you like to have a TV in that room? That'll be $400.

I found this particularly funny.  The unit comes with standard toilets, you know the kind, built for 8 year olds.  So, one of the options is to select the elongated model (standard in all of the construction projects I've been in before).  The upcharge is $465.  If I were to go buy the toilet myself it would be $130.  Now, before you say, well it must be installation, plumbers are expensive.  Remember, the original toilet was going to be installed, so that was included in the base.  That's about the way it goes.  Each item I've researched so far has been 300% higher through the developer.  I'm starting to feel like I'm NASA building a space shuttle.

One of the funnier upcharge items was a bathroom vanity.  On the floor of the showroom, the vanity was listed at $400.  By the time the estimate came to us, it was over $1,000.

The interesting thing is, everyone participating in the process knows what a big rip off it is.  Each one of the people we work with rolls his/her eyes and says -- "sorry, it's just the way it is".

So back to quality, service and price.

One would therefore expect, that in this "luxury" condo we would be getting great quality and service since we're sacrificing on price.  Nope.  In fact, as you go through the selection process and try to get the upgrade estimates done, the developer takes months to to deliver them.  Not days, not weeks -- months.

And, while you're waiting and nervously biting your fingernails as the weeks tick by, they tell you that you better hurry up and approve it when it comes because it's going to take 12-16 weeks for them to do the work.

So, 20 years, six houses and three office spaces.  I used to think that the commercial contractors were bad with their $150 track lighting heads, but condo developers take the cake.  In my ranting to other people and other builders I've learned that this is the way the industry works.  In fact, one of the showroom people said, "you should have seen the mark-ups on the [such-and-such] project, they were even worse."

Some day, some how, some way, I sure hope that condo buyers will be able to rise up and shout "no more".  It's a broken system, kind of like investment companies that get you to buy their product, do a terrible job managing it and want to charge you punitive fees to exit.

But then again, it's capitalism.  I signed the purchase agreement.  I just didn't realize that the economic model was designed as a bait and switch.  Live and learn.