Tuesday, April 30, 2024 
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
March 27, 2020
Condominium owners in Iqaluit say a sharp increase in insurance costs have forced them to the brink—and if recent trends continue, they will be squeezed out of homeownership.
That, in turn, would make Iqaluit’s housing crisis, including for the under-housed, even worse, officials say.
“We were told we were lucky to get insurance at all,” said condo owner Bethany Scott.
“If we didn’t get insurance, what would happen to our mortgages?”
Tracey Oram, another Iqaluit condo owner, said her condo board is in the same boat. She said insurance companies were so scared to give her insurance that, now, her condo board can’t afford a new claim.
“We have a policy that we can’t afford and that we can’t afford to use. So we have a policy that’s no good to us,” Oram said.
Condo owners in Canada need two different kinds of insurance: a residential policy that covers the contents of their unit, and a commercial policy that covers the whole building.
It’s the commercial coverage that has seen a sharp increase across Canada in recent years.
Oram, the treasurer of her condo board, said that when she bought her condo in 2016 the commercial insurance was about $18,000 for 10 units. Her condo board has had one claim since then, Oram said. This year, after months of scrambling to find multiple companies willing to share the risk of the policy, the cost is just over $50,000. That’s an increase of 178 per cent in five years.
Condo fees have had to increase to cover the added expense, with some owners in Oram’s building paying nearly $800 per month on top of their mortgage and residential insurance.
“Our broker basically told us companies are trying to get out of the North….. I would like to feel like we’re not backed into a corner and forced to have one company and no options,” Oram said.
The Royal Bank of Canada told Nunatsiaq News that it sold its Nunavut insurance business to Aviva Canada a few years ago.
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