something else.
Sounds silly? Good. Now could we please stop calling appartments
condos! An appartment that is rented is identical to one that is
owned. Even worse, many of the condominium appartments are rented out!
A condo is an appartment. The fact that you pay money every month to a
bank (mortgage) instead of to an investment group (rent) is useless
information.
And for those of you who think that ownership is inherently good,
please make a trip to New Orleans or Cleveland, Ohio.
By the way let us stop subsidizing home ownership (by allowing, for
example, people to dip tax free into their Registered Retirement
Saving Plan (RRSP)) or, as in the USA, by making mortgage interest tax
deductible). And if you are lucky enough to make $500,000 in profit
from the sale of your home, well, you should pay income taxes on that.
Maybe then I'd let you call your appartment by a different name.
Envoyé depuis mon iPod / Sent from my iPod touch.
3 comments:
I don't yet own a condo, but when I do I'm gonna have to start paying condo fees, and dammit, if I have to pay "condo fees" then I'm calling it a condo. By your definition, there's no such thing as a condo. A house is just a house. An townhouse is just a townhouse. An apartment is just an apartment. If the word condominium truly has no meaning, perhaps we should petition to have it removed from the OED.
If you own property which includes property you own outright as an individual and also common space you own as part of a collective of tenants then you own a condominium. That's why you pay condo fees. That's what a condominium is. By definition. So, if you're paying condo fees go ahead and refer to your condo as a condo, or as an apartment, it's up to you. I wouldn't tolerate someone telling you to stop calling your condo a condo though.
At least until we get the word condominium struck from the English language.
As for no longer encouraging homeownership, well, if we want the government to get out of our faces, fine I guess. Let's stop encouraging people to have kids though too. And stop giving them breaks to send their kids to university. And come to think of it, why am I helping to pay for the health care of sick people? ;-)
(BTW, your title is a bit misleading. A condo CAN be an apartment. It can also be a town house. It can even be a detached house. The point is, if your own the individual unit, and a share of common areas collectively with your fellow condo members it's a condo. I'll ignore the difference once my landlord calls me up to discuss what colour I'd like the hallways in my apartment building to be, or my superintendent comes to me and my neighbours to ask for a raise, or my landlord starts giving me access to every piece of financial documentation pertaining to the building, it's grounds, and the salaries of my landlord's employees who work in and around my building. Until then, my apartment is definitely different from a condo).
OK, I just re-read my comment and I think it came off a bit too snarky. Rest assured I wasn't snarling, but more chuckling when I wrote it (though can you tell I'm thinking of buying a condo?).
I'm curious. What led to this post? Was it something in particular? (if you don't mind my asking!). Seems like something set it off. Was it just someone saying "my condo this" and "my condo that"?
Maybe when I buy my condo I should avoid calling it a condo!
It'll still be a condo though! :-)
"A condo CAN be an apartment. It can also be a town house. It can even be a detached house." (Lord Kithchen's first comment).
Lord Kitchen, indeed. If you call the pizza guy and tell him you live in a condo, instead of a townhouse, there is a chance he will be driving around town looking for a highrise. The pizza guy doesn't care who owns your home, so you can leave the condo part out.
There are times you need to mention that you live in a condominium, when applying for insurance, for example, but then you also have to say what type of condo it is (the insurance rate for a condominium appartment will be different than for a condominium townhouse).
There are verry few instances where the condo part of condominium appartment/townhouse is important.
A flat is a flat in the UK and I submit that we should start calling condominium appartments, "appartments".
Their is no public policy advantage to have people owning their homes vs. renting (or they are canceled out by the many dissadvantages). So it does not make sense to use tax dollars from everybody (including renters) to subsidize home ownership.
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