Buying Condos Off Plan Risks

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Do you prefer buying a standing house, or choosing one from a building plan, to be built in the future?


What is real estate? Gambling based on a piece of land. The bank gives you money to buy land as big as a baseball field and you build up. The end result is a 12 storey condo building with underground parking.

Before the pandemic, there was a huge billboard around here, advertising a yet to be built condo building. Developers kept posting numbers of people who were buying units off-plan. Yes, it was next to the city’s sports complex but everything else was going downhill.

The major avenue is now dotted with vacant street level shops because we defected to warm shopping malls and online shopping. The area also has social problems that cannot be solved by any amount of money from the federal government in Ottawa and provincial government.

That billboard was taken down before the pandemic, something to do with what developers did or didn’t do. I guess buyers got their refund one way or the other. Buying off-plan is touted as a good investment but cautious people believe in buying apples from the tree, not a tree that has yet to be planted.

And that’s why they remain poor.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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