As stories of condo board fraud in the Toronto area have made recent headlines, Zoocasa offers advice to boards and unit owners.

Canadian Condominium Association Institute’s second vice president, Marc Bhalla, said there are several things condo owners and boards can do to prevent non-unit owners from “hijacking” boards.

Bhalla said to get to know your neighbours in order to prevent non-condo unit owners from infiltrating a board.

“If you look at how those types of concerns can be avoided, the easy answer is by people actively participating in their annual general meetings, not using proxies and not missing the opportunity to get to know the people who are interested in running for their board,” Bhalla said in the Zoocasa blog post.

Bhalla explained how who should be on the board can get complicated, especially when an owner sells a unit but volunteers to stay on the board to fulfill his or her obligation to the community.

“It’s not necessarily the case that a non-owner is a bad director,” Bhalla said in the post. “It just raises questions as to why somebody would want to do it, and that’s something that can be addressed at an annual meeting when you cast your ballot and get to learn a little more about the people who are running for the board.”