Condo buyers get an unpleasant surprise: a stiff bill for rental equipment

Residents and owners of a recently built Toronto condominium building facing collection letters and demands for thousands of dollars from Reliance Home Comfort Inc. are warning others to beware of vague references to HVAC rental contracts in closing documents and sales agreements.

“Every day now they leave a message on the phone, ‘You have an urgent matter with the bill,’” said Colman Connolly who signed a preconstruction sales contract more than seven years ago that he said made no reference to rental equipment. “I checked with my lawyer – there’s nothing in there. Quite a few people in the building have started to pay the bills, they say ‘we didn’t want the hassle,’ but once they started they were hooked in.”

The first time many of the residents of 1400 Kingston Rd., a 42-unit mid-rise condo building known as Upper Beach Club that registered in 2022, ever heard of Reliance was when so-called “welcome packages” began showing up in the summer of 2023. The packages said that Reliance owned the fan-coil units in their apartments – which are mechanical units that help regulate airflow and temperature from the building’s central forced air heaters and chillers – and the residents were subject to a 10-year rental agreement. The cost per month starts at $70 a unit (some apartments have multiple fan coils, but all have at least one) that could rise by as little as 3.5 per cent per year, or more if the rate of inflation is higher.