Are Strata Properties being properly Maintained?

I was reviewing the news storey regarding the Sussex Square residents’ dispute with their leaseholders Westsea Construction and Capital Construction Supplies. At the heart of this dispute is the fact that the buildings they live in have $10M worth of repairs required to a leaky building envelope.  The residents feel that they should not have to pay because in their opinion, the building was not adequately maintained (or designed and built, but I am going to concentrate on maintained), and it is this lack of maintenance that caused the building enclosure to fail.

Is this a valid argument?  I know that most home warranty programs have clauses stating that if you do not maintain your home and damage occurs due to the lack of maintenance, they will not cover you.  Is this case not the same thing?  The leaseholders had a responsibility for the maintenance of the buildings.  If it can be shown that the damage was a result due to the lack of maintenance, should they not be responsible for the repair?  Why should the residents (who are in this case acting as the ‘insurance funders’) have to pay for this work.

This leads me to another question.  Do most building managers have the skills to properly manage the maintenance of the buildings in their portfolio?  I do not believe so. 

Back in the 90’s the rules changed making it mandatory that all Strata managers become licensed by the Real Estate Council in BC.  This was a good step as it started to ensure that the public could expect a level playing field with all managers meeting a minimal level of training.  It also requires all managers to complete ongoing education in two year cycles. But is this enough? 

Looking through the initial training course, there is only 2 out of 25 chapters that deal with Buildings (building design and construction & controls, maintenance, and energy conservation).  The rest is administrative type topics (the paperwork portion of the job) or the CYA topics (the Law and ethics).  Only two weeks out of the suggested 25 weeks is dedicated to gaining knowledge that would allow you to properly manage the maintenance of the buildings.

Next looking at the list of approved ongoing education courses, not one of them deal with the maintenance of the building and in fact a majority of them deal with topics that the average manager will never need, like selling real estate, time shares, and marketing, topics suitable for Real Estate agents but probably not for property managers.

I have met a lot of building managers in my job.  The vast majority of them appear to have a good handle on the day to day administration portion of the job, but few have exhibited any significant degree of building knowledge and appear particularly ignorant to building enclosure science.  The goods ones are out there; during the 10 year period of time that I owned a Condo and was on the Strata, we worked with an excellent manager who did realize the importance of proactive maintenance and the savings achieved by spending a little bit more up front to do it right.  In fact, his practices had a lasting effect on how I approach maintenance and repairs to this day.  But unfortunately, he appears to be one of the few exceptions as opposed to the rule.

So if a Strata relies on a property manager for advice on maintaining their building stock, and the manager does not have the skills related to construction, building maintenance, or building enclosure science, what is the chances that the building will have the proper proactive maintenance performed?  

The one saving grace related to this discussion is that the new Bill 8 will require all Strata (unless they opt out) to perform professional engineering reviews of their Building Enclosure on a regular cycle.  This should gradually transform all Strata building stock into well maintained structures.

Maintenance Matters: Exposed Wood Structures in Multi-Unit Residential Buildings

This Home Protection Office Video discusses the need for ongoing maintenance to exterior wood surfaces.

It is important to ensure that all wood surfaces remain well sealed with paint, stain, or sealer.  All surfaces should also be slopped so that water does not sit on their surfaces.  Annual inspections are recommended and SENWI can assist in this regard.

Maintenance Matters: Cladding in Multi-Unit Residential Buildings

This Home Protection Office video identifies the responsibility by Strata to maintain the cladding on the Strata's dwellings.  Pay particular attention to the warning against using pressure washers.

All cladding requires ongoing maintenance including regular cleaning (yearly or every two years), and resealing.

Yearly cladding inspections are recommended.  SENWI can provide assistance in this area.

Should agents make sure paperwork is in order when they list a Multi-Family Dwelling

SENWI inspects a lot of multi-family residences and we are becoming impatient with the general lack of transparency we are encountering by STRATA’s and their representatives (or in brand new buildings, by the developer) during the purchase process. SENWI feels that a purchaser is entitled to receive any and all information available on a given Strata complex, which would typically be available to the STRATA owners as a course of routine or on special request. This would include all minutes (Council and owner meetings), all engineering and mechanical reports, financial records, and any legal action by or against the STRATA. After all, the purchaser is technically now an owner with an accepted offer. That offer just happens to be based on the purchaser being satisfied with a due-diligence process.


Many good purchasers’ agents will include clauses in the purchase contract asking for these types of documents (unfortunately not all agents engage in this practice), but in our experience some of the documents (specifically the engineering and mechanical reports) are often not provided on a timely basis and sometimes not at all. For instance, our inspectors are regularly told that a building envelope report is not available for the STRATA’s we inspect. There are a very few occasions, once we have pressed the issue, that we find this to be the case and instead the problem often seems to be one of laziness or concealment.

It is SENWI’s opinion that the buying public needs to demand laws to better protect a purchaser in this Province. When a multi-family STRATA dwelling is offered for sale, there should be requirements in place to ensure the purchaser is provided access to all required and available documentation. This access should be expedient and not involve days of delay. In an age where hard drive space is cheap, there is no reason why all documents cannot be kept and forwarded in an electronic format at no cost within an hour or two of the request. There are also multiple economic options for electronic transport of large files including FTP sites if necessary. An even better option is to upload all of the STRATA’s documents to a secure website for owner access. Then a purchaser with an accepted offer could be provided login credentials to the website with full access to all of the documentation they need to make an informed and timely decision. Fortunately, the website concept is catching on with some of the larger STRATA’s in the city.

SO, if you are purchasing a multi-family, make sure your agent asks for these documents in  your offer and include an expedited time frame (at most 48 hours)  that you are to receive these documents.