A small group of landlords who own hundreds of rental properties across the province have run out of money, owe over $144 million in unpaid loans and face dozens of lawsuits from creditors, according to documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Dylan Suitor, Ryan Molony and Aruba Butt are behind 11 now-insolvent corporations that face a “liquidity crisis” with only $100,000 in the bank, the documents say.
The landlords and their corporations are based in the Hamilton area, but specialize in buying, renovating and in some cases relisting “distressed residential real estate in undervalued markets,” said a court factum.
Those markets are in Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, as well as smaller communities, including Kirkland Lake, Temiskaming Shores and Val Caron.
I would be in favour of limiting how many properties/parcels one corp can own (as long as there’s a limit to how many corps one person can own). But outright bans would probably be detrimental.
Lots of areas need to be bought up by corps in order to densify areas, like buying up 10 detached houses in a downtown area in order to merge it and build a large apartment building which can house 200 instead of 20.
It becomes a problem when one person owns ten corps each of which have a house each to rent out, or when one corp owns 300 properties.