Walk through any major city in Ontario and you’ll see the story written in glass. Shimmering towers rise into the sky—newer, sleeker, cheaper. Wooden stacked townhomes crowd newly built suburbs with fresh landscaping and still-shiny siding. The past two or three decades have given rise to an extraordinary housing shift, with condominiums taking a leading role in urban and suburban growth. And yet, a quiet and deeply concerning reality lies ahead: We’ve built for today—not for the future.

Most of Ontario's condominium stock is still young, less than 30 years old. In building years, they're still teenagers. These are not the heavy stone builds of the 1920s and 30s, many of which hold their age with grace. Today's buildings are often lighter, faster, and cheaper—characterized by glass cladding, plastic piping, and engineered components that may not be engineered to endure. The question isn't whether these buildings will age out, but when—and what happens when they do.

 Ask any seasoned manager overseeing a 60-year-old building, and you’ll hear the same refrain: relentless maintenance, unending capital repairs, growing owner fatigue. Even the best-run corporations with diligent boards and proactive funding strategies struggle under the weight of age. And those are the well-built ones.

Now look ahead. What happens when today’s towers hit 60? How about 80? 120?

If our oldest condos are already demanding constant attention, what future awaits the sleek but fragile towers being built today at breakneck speed? Many already required extensive repairs well before their 20th birthday—plumbing replacements, window failures, structural deficiencies. Remember Kitec? That’s not ancient history—it’s recent, and it’s just one example of a building material that didn’t last. And yet, it's far from the last.

We’re also building in a new climate reality. Extreme weather is no longer rare—it’s routine. Prolonged heat waves, freeze-thaw cycles, intense winds, and torrential rain all take a growing toll on building envelopes, sump pumps, and rooftop equipment. Repairs are no longer just about age—they’re about surviving the next storm. And those storms are coming faster and hitting harder.

Detached homes are a useful comparison. You can still find houses over a hundred years old in Ontario, lovingly preserved and continually updated—but they're the exception. The vast majority have long since been torn down, rebuilt, and modernized. Most houses are removed well before turning 50. That cycle is accepted, even expected, in single-family housing.

But condominiums are different. They’re not designed to be torn down. They’re complex, interdependent ecosystems of owners, systems, and legal structures. You can’t just gut a 40-storey tower and start over. Terminating a condominium is a legal labyrinth that requires near-unanimous consent, court involvement, and extensive costs. Add to that the complexity of mixed-use components, commercial tenancies, shared facilities, and layered agreements, and termination becomes a Rubik’s Cube of conflicting interests. What happens when one condominium in a shared facility wants out, but the others don’t—or can’t?

Even in prosperous times, many boards struggle to maintain their buildings. Transparency is low, engagement is limited, and major decisions are often delayed until they become urgent. If we can’t fund a $2 million roof today, how will we fund a $20 million building envelope tomorrow?

What happens when the cost to maintain a condo exceeds the willingness—or ability—of its owners to pay? What happens when parts can no longer be sourced, when insurance becomes unaffordable, when resale value plummets due to visible decay? These are questions that we have not yet had to face—but sadly, are inevitable—and that we have done nothing to prepare for.

Even today, with buildings that are relatively young, we struggle to make the tough calls. The tragedy in Surfside, Florida was a wake-up call: a structurally compromised tower, years of deferred decisions, and a board caught between escalating costs and owner resistance. Are we naïve enough to believe it couldn't happen here?

We don’t like to talk about it, but a reckoning is coming. We may one day need to grapple with a concept few have prepared for—the death of the condominium—and it may come sooner than we think. If not in our lifetime, certainly in those of our children.

And that may be the most telling part of all: once again, we are handing an unsolved problem to the next generation. Another crisis of our own making—conceived in optimism, but built without foresight.

This isn’t fearmongering. It’s foresight. Our industry—boards, managers, engineers, regulators—must begin to treat condominiums as assets with lifespans, not as permanent fixtures. We must plan not just for capital repairs, but for exit strategies. We must consider how land value, demographics, legislation, and climate will shape the next 50 years.

Because while the glass still gleams, the countdown has already begun.
 

Eric Plant, RCM, MBA, is a director at Brilliant Property Management.
brilliantproperty.ca

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