They thought of moving into a “luxurious” building in the Griffintown district, offering a variety of attractive services. Instead, they found themselves in a noisy building under construction, where several balconies were completed months after their arrival, not to mention the common areas still under construction. These tenants are now uniting to demand compensation from their landlords, who blame them on the challenges they are encountering in sourcing materials to complete this real estate project.
At the corner of Peel and Ottawa streets stand two large black towers of 16 and 19 floors which include a total of 409 rental condominiums. The real estate project, piloted by developers Mondev and Hillpark Capital, aims to be top-of-the-range and rental costs follow accordingly: a studio is rented there for more than $1,500 per month, an amount that can increase to more than $1900 for larger units.
These rents include, in theory, access to several amenities, including a gym and a shared workspace. However, these common areas are still under construction, several months after tenants moved into this building.
“When we visited, we were told that everything would be finished by the time we arrived, except for the gym, which would arrive in October due to delivery delays,” recalls a tenant who moved into her apartment on the 1er august. She requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from the owners of the building, like seven other tenants of this building complex met during an on-site visit by The duty tuesday.
Many of them had the unpleasant surprise, when they arrived in their condominium, to find that it was not really ready to welcome them. “When I arrived the fridge was a bit damaged, the bathroom door wouldn’t close, everything was misaligned. There are a lot of things in the kitchen that were broken, ”explains an occupant who moved in on 1er September in his studio.
A tenant told the Homework that the paint was still fresh in her apartment when she moved into it on the 1er august. Some balconies did not have railings when tenants moved into their accommodation.
“For four months, I didn’t have a balcony. Besides that, there was no handle [sur la porte menant au balcon]. The cold air entered through there for four months” before a construction worker finally came to solve the problem, underlines a tenant, who also reports heating problems in her apartment with large windows. “However, it should be a luxurious building,” she says.
Several tenants have also reported problems with water flowing along the windows of their dwelling. “It’s being repaired,” says Hugo Carlone, assistant vice-president of the residential division of Cogir, the company responsible for managing the building.
Formal notice
Faced with this accumulation of problems, a hundred tenants jointly signed a formal notice which was sent to the owners of the building on November 30. The document, which The duty was able to consult, argues that the leases of the tenants have not been respected, since several services included in the rents paid by them are not yet offered to them.
The formal notice also deplores the numerous thefts of parcels due to the absence of mailboxes and a security guard on the ground floor of the building. The tenants have thus demanded a 20% reduction in their monthly rent until all the amenities that the building must include “are exploitable”. They are also asking for compensation of $500 per dwelling “as moral damages”.
“The only thing worth mentioning is that the people who moved here were fully aware of the situation in the building from the start. They even signed receipts that say they are aware that there is construction in the building without having a final date for the common areas, ”replied Hugo Carlone, of Cogir. He also claims that delays in the supply of building materials are delaying the completion of this real estate project.
When I arrived the fridge was a bit damaged, the bathroom door wouldn’t close, everything was misaligned. There are a lot of things in the kitchen that were broken.
Mr. Carlone says that the promotion which allows new tenants of this building to benefit from three months of free rent on their arrival is precisely intended to compensate for the fact that this building complex is still under construction. “People knew what they were getting into,” he says. The tenants claim for their part in their formal notice that these three months of free rent were presented to them as being “a promotional offer”, and not as a form of compensation for the inconveniences suffered.
Cogir also replied to this formal notice by arguing that it is not valid, the complaints of the tenants having to be treated individually. “We go through each file one after the other,” says Mr. Carlone. “We don’t want people to leave. »