Another Article On Olympic Village Owner Litigation

From ‘A $1.8-million Olympic Village dream turns sour’, by Gary Mason, G&M, 25 Mar 2011 –
“Helen Lee and her husband bought a place in Vancouver’s Olympic Village back in 2007, when it was still being built.
A gold-medal sales pitch compelled the couple to fork out $1.8-million for an 11th-floor, 1,475-square-foot condo with expansive mountain and water views.
“It was going to be our dream home,” Ms. Lee remembers.
Four years later, the couple’s dream has officially turned into a nightmare.
The Lees are among more than 60 condo owners at the Village who have filed a class-action lawsuit demanding their money back.
“One of our bathroom doors opens out into the hallway,” Ms. Lee told me. “I have two children who run back and forth in front of it and they have been hit by the door. Our floors are wrecked. We’ve had no heat for two months. The flex space we were promised is half the size.”
The Lees would love to find a way to get their money back. They, like most of the others involved in the lawsuit, bought at the top of the market.
Personally, I [Gary Mason] can muster some sympathy for the owners. When you fork out $1.8-million for a condo you expect it to be built to the highest standards.”

The buyer deserves to get a condo at the specifications promised in the original deal.
If they are compensated, they should be compensated for an amount that reflects the physical deficiencies NOT an amount that reflects the plunge in market price.
If the market price of these condos had gone UP by 30% since their purchase, the only thing we’d be hearing from them is cooing about what bright investors they are. The buyers should bear the full brunt of the price change risk.
The OV examples are just a small taste of the kind of bickering we’ll hear for years after the broad market plunges. -vreaa