Common Elements

Tanya Chiu, a yoga instructor, bought her condo about a decade ago, when her forty-­unit building, located near Toronto’s High Park and designed in a Miami-­inflected art deco style, was “just a drawing.” Until she and her husband decided to sell, earlier this year, and move into a house with a backyard, they were mostly satisfied. “There’s a ton of great stuff about living here,” she told me in June as she was preparing to put the apartment on the market.

The location, for one thing: near transit, parks, lively retail strips. And while the building didn’t have all the bells and whistles of newer developments (pool, concierge, and so on), she said it was small enough that residents got to know one another. Yes, there were frustrations: renters who didn’t care for the place and annual maintenance fees that inched up each year. For all that, she allows, “the condo board did the best they can.”

Yet it’s not difficult to find people who’ve...