If you are selling a condo then you will need to gather all of your condo documents and have them ready – when you list! Condo documents are essentially the paper history of a Condo Corporation. Some of the documents that are usually included are Meeting Minutes, Annual Budget, Condo Plans & Insurance Certificates. So why do you need them and where do you get them.
The first reason you need to get them in order is that your REALTOR® will need them to verify information that is needed to load the listing onto REALTOR.ca. Some of the things they will need to confirm are unit number (which isn’t always the same as your street address) and unit size and what that includes. The second reason you need them is because the buyer will likely want to review them. Condo buyers can write in a condition to “Review Condo Documents”. This allows them to see what has been happening with the corporation. Most prudent buyers will want to know if the condo is being responsibly run financially, if they have a sufficient reserve fund and what issues have been top of mind at recent meetings. When they write the Condo Document Condition into the offer they will have until a certain date to review the documents, so as the seller you want to have those documents ready to hand over to them as soon as the offer is accepted.
Where are all these pieces of paper? You probably received a stack of documents when you first bought the condo so start by digging those up. Most corporations will mail new or updated documents (like the Insurance Certificate) directly to you. However it is still very likely that you will be missing some of the documents since they aren’t all sent out to owners. You can acquire the missing ones by contacting the Management Company for the Condo. Their contact information should be on the documentation they have sent you previously. Most Management Companies charge for the these documents and some even double or triple the cost if you need them right away. This is another reason to get it done early when you aren’t in time crunch.
Most people don’t enjoy wading through paperwork they’ve stacked on the back of a shelf but you will be glad when it’s done and it’s one less thing to move!
