"Condominiums" are a creature of statute in Canada. Prior to the changes in the wording of the Real Estate Act in Canada real estate had to include land and with a simple phrase added to the law . . . came condominiums, an entirely new investment creature that had never existed before.

In the initial stages of condominiums, running throughout the seventies and into the eighties, they simply did not catch on.  In those days you had apartment buildings where a developer built a multi unit development and rented out all of the units himself facing rent control and other government intervention.  There was only one deed on the property.   Condos freed up the developer to register individual deeds on individual "units" within the same building and sell the space above the real estate as part of the real estate.  The developer, after registering the building then transferred individual title to individual buyers who, in turn, could become quasi landlords with the ownership of a single income producing property.

In 1982 the Reichmann Family jumped head first into the luxury residential condominium market built on their confidence developed through developing, building, owning and managing the city’s most predominant commercial addresses including First Canadian Place.

The futuristic Reichmann’s envisioned an oasis above the city offering panoramic lake and city views to those willing to invest that little bit extra to live at the most prestigious address in the city.

Since then a number of other quality developments have come onto the market. Actually a couple from the same era are Renaissance Plaza and 33 Jackes. 66 Avenue Rd would also fall into this bracket as would Kings Landing by the Toronto Harbour.

As you are undoubtedly aware, as the eighties grew to a close so did it appear that the day of the condo grew dim as well. The dilemma was quite straight forward, the horrific ignition of presale condominiums throughout the eighties and the resulting build-out of these properties there resulted in a glut of these "units" on the market which could not be resold for any profit and in many instances had been mortgaged when the market was up and now that the market had collapsed their equity did not even support the mortgage.

With this dilemma obvious to me as the marketer of condominiums, I decided to move my business to Asia to capitalize on the 1997 reversion of Hong Kong to the communist Chinese. I learned that Canada was the easiest place in the world for the colony's free wheeling and very wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs who had flourished under Britain’s liberal capitalist management. It wasn’t rocket science to calculate that secure real estate investments in Canada would prove of interest to them. What was needed was a communications vehicle to link the Asian buyers/investors with these Canadian residential condominiums (many of which the Bankers were already virtually in control of).

We managed to successfully market and sell units in The Rosedale, The Carlyle, and others as well as taking a number of Bramalea properties using totally digital media. Starting in 1991 I published 2 annual coffee table magazines profiling the Toronto market and profiling developments and developers with legal advise to immigrants. Our efforts unfortunately were not enough to miraculously counter the inevitable crash of the market about to hit. Surprising, and somewhat sadly the greater majority of our Canadian clients ended up in bankruptcy (Olympia & York, Bramalea, etc.)

In the spring of 1990 I set out on a United Airlines 747 for Hong Kong, never having been there and not knowing anyone there but confident in my ability to capitalize on this historic event that was coming up. I met a Chinese family while selling them a couple of "units" in Minto Plaza on Elm Street in Toronto. Their daughter was just leaving her upper management position with Trans Canada Gas and was developing her own immigration consultancy. She spoke fluent English and Cantonese and was relatively fluent in Mandarin. She was also connected through birth to one of Hong Kong’s top five families. I published a small hand book profiling Toronto properties the first year and followed up in the second with a full coffee table magazine consisting primarily of editorial that I had found in a Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce publication. My third publication was another coffee table book profiling Florida properties.

Our strategy was to combine her immigration activities in Asia with my digital media network. I have to confess that at that time, in 1990 my technical expertise in digital media (transposing the old media like video and audio on this new computer technology) were limited at best. In my ignorance I honestly felt that much more than what we are doing even today was already in operation. The strange thing is that it all does, in fact exist today however no-one is actually developing successful and applicable operating models of applications to fulfill the expectations of those seeking the information. That’s what Simplycondos.com is all about!

In my second year there I had developed the computer application that I had envisioned into somewhat of a manageable presentation and spent my time flying from Hong Kong back to Toronto and then back to Hong Kong once I managed to pick up more properties for sale. My aptitude for computers is somewhat lame but thanks to Naginder who took to computers and CD-ROM like a duck taking to water, we managed to co-produce our first CD-ROM back in 1992. It was a DOS operating system CD-ROM which only meant that one would have to be almost a rocket scientist to get it running on their computer. Not exactly a commercial product but yet a product that was unique enough to give us a strategic advantage while trying to sell properties in Hong Kong’s flooded international real estate market. Leading international banks and consulting companies gave us reference letters (as did our developer clients as we started selling properties) that helped us a lot with the credibility factor. Well, to cut a long story short, I managed to negotiate a telephone fax system in Hong Kong in a co-venture with Hong Kong Telecom and formed a co-venture partnership with Alexander Realty, a publicly traded ethnic Chinese property company and another with Wayfoong Properties, the real estate division of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank expressly to facilitate the acquisition of comprehensive, detailed information on the Toronto residential condominium industry. The South China Morning Post wrote a great article on our co-venture with Hong Kong Telecom.

With the arrival of 1997 and the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese I returned to North America to apply the digital media expertise and business model to building a web site to serve as a "Specialty Channel" on the Internet. 

I am the photographer and videographer and Naginder, my partner in art and life handles all the artistic and interface dynamic stuff.