Most of the 108 Eastboro buyers put down deposits five or six years ago. They’ve now been told their purchase agreements are being terminated.
Homebuyers caught in the Eastboro development fiasco say it has set their finances back by years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Homebuyers lost out on the appreciation of their homes and their stranded deposit monies — and many now face a housing market with even steeper prices.
Most of the 108 Eastboro buyers put down deposits five or six years ago. They’ve now been told their purchase agreements are being terminated and the unfinished Orléans development sold in receivership.
Ottawa teacher Melissa Nadeau, 30, and her public servant husband put down a $70,000 deposit in January 2020 on a $650,000 home just before the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic.
She tried unsuccessfully to get their deposit back during the project’s early delays and is now unsure how much they’ll recover.
Frustrated by their inability to get a firm date to take possession of their new home, the Nadeaus bought another house to accommodate their four children. They’ve turned it into a triplex to make it more affordable.
“It’s pretty frustrating,” Nadeau said. “We were very lucky to be able to buy another house, but it has really affected our finances. We’re part of the generation that doesn’t have cheap housing, like our parents did.”
Gurprit Dhaliwal, 39, an Ottawa police officer, said it was difficult to be strung along year after year by Eastboro’s builder, Ashcroft Homes.
After putting down a $75,000 deposit in June 2019, Dhaliwal was told by Ashcroft that his new home would be completed in September 2021.
“I feel frustrated of course,” Dhaliwal said, “and along with that comes other emotions. You’re frustrated, you’re angry, you want answers, you want to understand why this happened.”
Evening Update
Dhaliwal, a married father of two young children, rented for years while waiting for his Eastboro home and recently bought a new house.
“It has been a financial setback, for sure,” he said. “We’ve been running around the last five years, and have incurred more debt.”
Dhaliwal notes that, even if he gets his deposit back, there’s no compensation for the lost equity and appreciation.
Rachel Verner, 66, put down a $54,000 deposit in early 2019 to secure an Eastboro bungalow, the layout of which she thought would help make her senior years easier to navigate.
Verner’s home is substantially completed and she visited it twice to take measurements. She purchased new appliances and hardwood flooring in the belief that her move-in date was imminent.
Luckily, Verner did not sell her current Orléans home while waiting for that to happen. She says she’s too exhausted by the ordeal to attempt another move.
“I just don’t feel like I have the energy anymore,” she says. “It has been very disappointing, and it has just left such a bad taste in my mouth. How could this happen?”
First-time homebuyer Alex Roussel, 29, put down a five-per-cent deposit on a $400,000 townhouse in Eastboro in 2018. “I just waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited,” he says.
His Eastboro townhouse is now about 90 per cent complete.
Roussel would like to see the Eastboro project sold to a developer who will honour the original purchase agreements, rather than watch as his townhouse is sold — likely for more than $600,000.
“The homeowners, we’re the ones who get taken to the cleaners,” says Roussel, who now lives in another townhouse he bought in 2022.
He blames both Ashcroft and City of Ottawa for the fiasco and contends the developer should never have been permitted to sell homes before building the necessary infrastructure.
Andrew Duffy is a National Newspaper Award-winning reporter and long-form feature writer based in Ottawa. To support his work, including exclusive content for subscribers only, sign up here: ottawacitizen.com/subscribe
