A large residential project by Pace Developments, a Richmond Hill-based property development company, has gone into receivership. Buyers of more than 1,000 off-plan residential properties could be at great risk.
This large-scale Urban North townhouse (townhouse) development located just over an hour's drive north of Toronto is located near Barry Go Station, on Yonge and Mapleview Drive. This brand new residential complex is planned to accommodate at least 1,000 homes. However, buyers of these off-the-plan properties may now have to sit back and see what happens.
According to Storeys, the 50-acre townhouse development at 700-780 Mapleview Drive East consists of about 1,000 townhouses and will be delivered in six phases.
该房产由 Mapleview Developments Ltd. 拥有，并由 2552741 Ontario Inc. 和位于列治文山的公司 Pace Mapleview Ltd.（也称为 Pace Developments）实益拥有。
KingSett Mortgage Corporation filed a petition for the appointment of a receiver on March 14, 2024, and the company entered into an agreement with Pace Developments in September 2022 whereby KingSett will provide Pace with seven separate loan financings for an aggregate principal amount of up to $105,762,112.
According to records obtained by the Residential Construction Regulatory Authority (HCRA), the guarantors of the loan were Dino Sciavilla and Yvonne Sciavilla, both directors of the company Pace Developments.
After the maturity date of the loan agreement was extended several times, the loan financing matured on February 1, 2024, according to court documents, at which time KingSett claimed it owed a total debt of $47,099,842.63 with interest. KingSett then issued a letter of demand and notice of intent to enforce the security on 16 February 2024 and then exercised its contractual rights to find a court-appointed receiver a month later (i.e., in March).
The Ontario Superior Court granted a receivership order on March 21, 2024.
The receiver may now be working on a timeline for the sales process, which requires court approval. Once approved, the receiver will hire a commercial real estate brokerage to list and sell the property, which will also require final approval from the court.
For off-plan buyers in Urban North, there is nothing they can do but wait at the moment.
According to the Receiver's notice to the Purchaser dated April 11, 2024, "the Receiver has not taken any action with respect to the completion of the Project or any Purchase Agreement" and "the Purchase Agreement remains in full force and effect."
According to the receiver, all 311 units in the first two phases of the project have been sold out, of which 264 units have been sold out. Some units in phases 3 and 4 have also been pre-sold, but the recipient did not disclose the exact number. Only the first two phases of construction have already begun.
So, future residents and buyers of the sprawling new community will have to wait.
In fact, this is not the first time that this project and the developer behind it have appeared in a "situation", and they have also been scolded very much on the Internet.
Some of them accused the company of being "the biggest liar".
"They sold my house to someone else at a higher price without informing us. It's just a joke. ”
One buyer complained, "The builder charges interest every day when we don't pay off the mortgage, and it's all because of their negligence! Because the handover requires a home inspection, and the appraiser can't report it after going to it three times, because the house is not complete, so the loan can't be approved...... We had to make a temporary use of the table board ourselves, and we opted for an upgrade, but there was a room on the main floor that was not built. We waited 5 years at our own expense...... This is the most unprofessional builder, they don't pay any compensation to the homeowner, and their actions are legal...... Well done, Pace!"
Some people sympathize with the buyers who bought the off-plan property in 2018 and 2019.
Another buyer said, "I am the buyer of the second phase of the pre-completed property. The townhouse is 60% complete and was scheduled for handover in June 2024, which we have been waiting for since 2018 and are now getting this result. I don't know if we'll still get the house, and after 6 years of patience we may lose everything. The developer told us to go to Tarion to request a refund...... It doesn't look good. This builder should never be trusted. ”
CBC reported last year that Pace Developments abruptly canceled a years-long sale unless the buyer paid an extra $100,000.
Last fall, Pace Developments sent a surprise letter to 70 buyers at the Urban North project, claiming to have cancelled their sales agreements unless the buyers were willing to pay an additional $100,000.
And now, KingSett Mortgage Corporation has a whopping $47 million in outstanding debt, which only adds to the headache for buyers.
The developer's website was also shut down because the rights to the domain name had apparently expired.
Pace Developments, which operates the 50-acre project under the Mapleview Developments umbrella, is accused of "illegally terminating dozens of purchase and sale agreements and misleading 33 purchasers to unethically extract more than $3 million from them," according to an allegations statement released by the Ontario government on Nov. 10 last year.
The allegations of misconduct are still under investigation, and Pace Developments has joined other Toronto-area developers who have been criticized for misconduct, such as Markham-based Ideal (BC) Developments, which "illegally took hundreds of thousands of deposits when selling new homes."
The scandal about the builder is not only about price increases, delays, debts, but also about the exposure of a video of a Mattamy Homes third-party builder hiring a sexy female dancer to perform at the Mattamy construction site in 2021 two years ago. Mattamy Homes' reputation has since suffered.
is still the same sentence, you really have to be careful when buying pre-sale properties!