There is also the nightmare of insurance problems for a building.
The recommended move, in NA at least, is to look for older buildings with less amenities and a history of consistent condo fees that they will gladly give to you in a report if requested, which allows the potential buyer to get a clearer idea of the potential cost of owning a condo over time.
It didn't matter, because builders would sell them all "over the plan" (literal translation, not sure if that's an expression in English) i.e. even before having actually started building. People were buying like crazy, they needed the houses. Not sure why it got worse in the decade I mentioned, but there is a clearly perceived drop (albeit, this is just opinion based) in the price/qualities ratio. So once the developer had the money in their hands, why would they make more effort than the absolute minimum?
The solution is as you say, or litigation. My parent's condo board has recently won a years-long legal dispute and now the developer is forced to pay for all the repairs and improvements in the whole premise.
There are just a lot of condo boards, and a lot of them are 1) poorly managed, and 2) run by busy-bodies with their own agendas leading back to 1).
Same story as HOAs, really. Keep in mind that both have a selection bias, too -- well run neighborhoods or buildings don't generate controversy and lead to lawsuits or 6 paragraph screeds about how terrible they are.