Reading a strata before you buy matters, because with condos and townhomes the building counts as much as the unit. You can renovate a kitchen, but you cannot renovate the roof, the envelope, or the neighbours’ decision-making. That is why, before you get attached to a Coquitlam apartment with a nice view of the mountains, I want us reading the strata documents together. They are dull, they are long, and they tell you almost everything that will actually affect your money.
I read a lot of these, and I will be honest that no single document gives you a clean yes or no. It is a picture built from several pieces. Below is how I go through them, what each one is for, and the red flags that make me slow a client down. This is general guidance from a REALTOR, not legal advice, so on anything that looks serious we bring in a strata-savvy lawyer to read it properly.
The depreciation report is the building’s long-range plan for its big-ticket components: roof, elevators, plumbing, the building envelope, parkade membrane, and so on. It estimates when each item needs replacing and roughly what it will cost, then models how the strata should be funding for it. In BC most stratas are required to have one and to update it on a set cycle, though the specifics have been tightening, so check the date on the copy you are handed.
What I look for is not just whether the report exists but whether the strata is actually following it. A beautiful thirty-year plan means little if the contingency fund is being kept thin and nobody is topping it up. When the report flags a major expense coming in the next few years and the fund is nowhere near it, that gap usually becomes a special levy with your name on it.
The contingency reserve fund, the CRF, is the building’s savings account for major repairs. When I open the financial statements, I am comparing the size of that fund against the building’s age and against what the depreciation report says is coming. A healthy CRF in a well-run older building gives me comfort. A skinny CRF in a building facing a roof or envelope job makes me nervous, because the money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is the owners.
There is no perfect target number, because a ten-year-old building and a forty-year-old building have very different needs. What matters is the fund relative to the liabilities ahead of it. If those two things are badly out of line, I want to understand the plan before you buy in.
The council meeting minutes are where the real story lives, and I read at least the last two years of them, AGM and any special general meetings included. Minutes tell you what the owners argue about, what keeps getting deferred, and whether a special levy is being discussed. A special levy is a one-time charge split among owners to pay for something the CRF cannot cover, and it can run from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands depending on the job.
Here is a detail buyers miss: timing matters legally. Depending on when a levy is approved relative to your completion date, responsibility for paying it can fall on the seller or on you. This is exactly the kind of thing a lawyer sorts out, and it is a good reason to read minutes before, not after, you write an offer.
Bylaws and rules govern what you can and cannot do in the building. Pets, rentals, age restrictions, short-term rentals, barbecues, flooring, even whether you can run a home business. Two things I flag for buyers:
None of these is automatically a deal-breaker, but any of them makes me dig harder:
I would rather walk you through the specific numbers for the exact building you are considering than lean on a headline about condos being risky. Some Coquitlam buildings are exceptionally well managed and are a genuinely smart buy. Others hide a levy behind a fresh coat of lobby paint. The documents are how you tell them apart.
If you have a place in mind, send me the strata package and I will read it with you, flag what I would ask about, and bring in a lawyer where it counts. Better to spend an evening in the paperwork now than a surprise cheque later.
Before you get deep into years of minutes, the Information Certificate, known as the Form B, gives you a quick snapshot of the unit itself. It lays out the monthly strata fee for that home, the balance in the contingency reserve fund, any special levies already approved against the unit, whether the strata is party to any lawsuits, and what parking and storage are assigned. It’s the closest thing to a one-page health check the strata provides.
I read the Form B early because it tells me where to spend my time. If it shows an approved levy or names ongoing litigation, that reshapes the whole conversation. If it shows a clean picture, I still read the minutes and depreciation report, but with a calmer starting point. Just remember the Form B is a moment in time; it won’t capture a levy that’s being debated but not yet voted, which is why the minutes still matter.
One area buyers almost never think about, and one that has burned owners across BC, is the building’s insurance. Strata insurance premiums and deductibles have climbed sharply in recent years, especially for water damage. The deductible is the piece to watch: if the building’s water-damage deductible is very high and an escape of water starts in or passes through your unit, you can be held responsible for that deductible, which can run into the tens of thousands.
When I review a package, I look at the current insurance summary and note the deductible amounts, particularly for water. Then I make sure the buyer’s own insurance broker knows those numbers, because you can often buy personal coverage that responds to the strata deductible. It’s an inexpensive fix, but only if you know the figure before you close. A building with a strong reserve and a modest insurance deductible is a genuinely different risk than one leaning on high deductibles to keep premiums down.
Reading the documents only protects you if it happens at the right point in the deal. In most BC condo and townhome purchases, we write the offer with a condition, a subject, giving you a set number of days to review the strata documents to your satisfaction. That window is your protection: if the minutes reveal a looming levy or the reserve is dangerously thin, you can walk away or renegotiate before you’re committed.
The practical trap is time. Getting a full document package from the strata management company can take several business days and sometimes costs a fee, so I ask for it the moment we have an accepted offer, not on day six of a seven-day window. If the package is large or something looks serious, we’d rather extend the subject period than rush a lawyer’s read. I would always rather lose a few days than have you own a problem the paperwork was quietly warning about.
Usually the seller’s side provides a strata document package, and many listings already have one prepared. If not, we can order the key records from the strata or its management company for a modest fee, typically well under a couple hundred dollars. I’d rather order them and read them properly during your subject period than skip it to save a small cost, because what’s in those pages can be a five-figure surprise.
There’s no magic number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. What matters is the fund relative to what the depreciation report says is coming. A $200,000 reserve is comforting in a newer building with no big jobs on the horizon and worrying in a forty-year-old building facing a roof and envelope replacement. I read the two documents side by side, the money against the liabilities, rather than judging the balance on its own.
It depends on the timing of the vote relative to your completion, and this is exactly where a strata-savvy lawyer earns their fee. As a rule of thumb, a levy approved before you complete is often the seller’s responsibility while one approved after can fall to you, but there are wrinkles and it can be negotiated in the contract. Reading the minutes before you write an offer is what gives you the leverage to sort this out in advance.
Yes, as long as your offer includes a subject to review of strata documents, which I always recommend. That condition gives you a window to read everything and back out cleanly if something serious turns up, like pending litigation or a levy you didn’t sign up for. The mistake I see is buyers waiving that subject to win a competitive situation, then discovering a problem they can no longer act on.
Check the date on the copy you’re handed, because an old report can badly understate today’s replacement costs. BC has been tightening the rules on how often stratas must update these, so a report that’s several years stale is itself a small red flag, especially if construction prices have moved since it was done. More telling than the age, though, is whether the strata has actually been funding toward what the report predicted.
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