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New Website
Malvern Condominium Property Management is proud to announce the launch of our new website. We have included several new features to make the site easier to navigate, and to make it truly useful as an educational tool for the condominium community.
Wondering how new legislation and government incentives really affects condos? Check out Bill’s Bulletin for our President’s take on these hot topics!
We’ve added many articles written by our staff over the last several years for industry publications, and will continue to educate the condominium community with updates in our newsletters.
Another new feature is our staff bios so you can learn more about our team of talented professionals. These individuals work tirelessly to make Malvern Condominium Property Management one of the best management companies out there!
We hope you enjoy our new website. Your comments and suggestions are welcome, feel free to suggest newsletter topics or other features you feel may be useful to you.
HST
The government has recently approved a Harmonized Sales Tax that will combine both the GST & PST into one tax. This new tax will become effective July 1, 2010. As a result, the cost of many items that were once PST exempt will now cost consumers more. These items include gasoline, utilities and labour.
So how does it affect condominiums operating budgets? Some strictly labour or service based contracts will see an 8% increase overall. Utilities will likely be the biggest contributing factor in increased condominium fees as utilities make up a large percentage of many budgets. Service contracts like security, management, legal or accounting services will increase very close to 8% since the majority of cost in those contracts is labour. Any contract that is “locked in” will simply see the increase of the H.S.T. added to the bottom line and will ultimately increase by 8% until it renews. At renewal, market forces will drive the cost down and the impact will be lessened. Other contracts, such as material supply contracts, will only see a minor increase as there is some PST already included in the price for goods.
How will it affect Condominium’s Reserve budgets? Reserve expenses will also increase. Since materials used in major replacement and repair are already subject to the 8% PST, the material portion will remain the same. The labour portion will increase by 8%. So, for a contract that is heavy in material costs like window replacements, the increase in the contract will be around 2% (assuming 75% material and 25% labour). Contracts that are labour intensive, like balcony restoration projects, (assuming 75% labour and 25% materials) will increase by around 6%.
In short, Condominium Corporations will see an increase in maintenance fees as a result of this new Harmonized Sales Tax. The impact is estimated by many experts to be about 6.8%.
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