The Strata Package: Five Red Flags We Look for Before a Buyer Commits

Almost every condo and most townhouses we show in the Fraser Valley are strata properties, which means every one of those purchases comes with a second thing to evaluate: the building. The strata package is where the building tells you the truth about itself, and buyers usually get about a week inside their subject period to hear it.

Nobody reads three hundred pages in a week, and in our experience nobody has to. The expensive surprises cluster in a handful of places. These are the five red flags we check first, in the order we check them, and what each one actually means when it turns up.

Red flag one: a levy that exists only in the minutes

A special levy is a one-time charge to owners, on top of monthly fees, for a cost the strata's savings can't cover. Once a levy is approved, it must appear on the Form B Information Certificate, the disclosure certificate the strata corporation is legally bound by. Your lawyer will see it and adjust for it at closing. Under BC's special levy rules, the seller owes the portion payable before the transfer date and the buyer owes the portion payable after.

The dangerous levy is the one that hasn't been approved yet. A levy that's still "in discussion" doesn't show on the Form B, and if it passes after you complete, it's entirely yours. The minutes are the only early warning system that exists. When we scan two years of council and general meeting minutes, levy language is the first thing we're hunting: quotes being gathered, an engineer's report "under review", a town-hall meeting about "funding options". That's a price change to the home that isn't on the listing.

Red flag two: a reserve fund that only meets the minimum

Every strata runs a contingency reserve fund, the CRF, its savings account for big irregular costs like roofs and elevators. Since November 1, 2023, BC stratas must contribute at least 10% of the annual operating budget to the CRF every year (provincial CRF rules).

Here's the trap in that number: 10% is a legal floor, and the floor has nothing to do with what a specific building needs. The building's real needs are spelled out in its depreciation report, which projects maintenance and replacement costs over 30 years and models how the CRF could pay for them. A strata contributing exactly 10% while its report recommends far more is compliant and underfunded at the same time.

So we never read the CRF balance on the Form B by itself. We read it against the report's next ten years. A modest balance in a young townhouse complex with no major work coming can be perfectly healthy. A larger balance in an aging tower with a roof, envelope, and elevators all converging can be nowhere near enough. The gap between the plan and the funding is the single best predictor of future levies we know of.

Red flag three: water, in any tense

Some words in strata minutes are worth more attention than whole documents. "Leak" is one. So are "ingress", "moisture", and "envelope consultant". Water is the most expensive word in a minute book, and it rarely appears once.

The pattern we treat most seriously is water plus silence: an investigation commissioned, mentioned in one set of minutes, and never resolved in any later set. In our experience that usually means the problem was priced, the price was unwelcome, and the file went quiet. The bill didn't go anywhere. The same applies to any repair deferred across multiple years of minutes. Councils defer honestly for a season; deferring the same roof three annual general meetings in a row is a funding problem wearing a scheduling costume.

This is also where the building's insurance history joins the story, because repeated water claims push premiums and deductibles up at renewal, and the strata must report on its insurance at every AGM. Which brings us to the fourth flag.

Red flag four: a deductible bigger than your down payment

The strata corporation insures the building itself, for full replacement value, against a list of named perils, with liability coverage of at least $2 million (provincial insurance rules). Since April 1, 2023, a summary of that coverage must be included with the Form B, so every properly assembled package now shows you the deductibles before you commit.

Read the water deductible line twice. The province notes strata deductibles can range from $100,000 to $750,000 or higher, and BC's framework allows a strata to recover its deductible from an owner when a loss originates in their unit, even if the owner wasn't negligent. The province's own example is a dishwasher hose that fails on its own and floods the neighbours.

The defence is unglamorous: a personal condo policy whose deductible coverage matches the actual numbers on the building's insurance summary. When our buyers get insurance quotes during the subject period, we ask them to hand the broker that summary page and ask one question: does my coverage match the water number on this page? Our strata insurance guide walks through the whole mechanism.

Red flag five: stale or missing documents

The documents themselves have a freshness date now. Strata corporations with five or more lots must obtain a depreciation report on a five-year cycle, prepared since July 1, 2025 by designated professionals, and stratas in the Fraser Valley, Metro Vancouver, and the Capital Regional District without a current report had a hard deadline of July 1, 2026 (depreciation report requirements). The old trick of deferring the report with an annual vote is gone.

That deadline has passed. A Fraser Valley package that arrives with a 2018 report, or none, is no longer neutral: either the strata is small enough to be exempt (four or fewer lots) or it has missed a legal obligation. The same logic applies to a Form B that's months old, the strata must produce a current one within 7 days for at most $35 plus copying, so there's no good reason to rely on a stale certificate. And a strata that can't produce paperwork on time is telling you something about how it runs everything else.

What we do when a flag turns up

A red flag is a reading instruction, not a verdict. Every building ages, and an honest package that names its problems is often a better buy than a quiet one. A named, priced roof project with a funding plan is a known cost you can weigh in your offer. What we won't let a buyer do is remove a document-review subject before the documents arrive, or treat the monthly fee as the price of the building's future. The real price of a strata home is the unit price plus the building's unfunded work, and the second number is readable in advance.

The full reading order, Form B first, depreciation report second, minutes third, bylaws fourth, insurance last, is laid out in our strata documents guide, part of the new BC strata guide that also covers fees, the reserve fund and levies, bylaws, and insurance. If you're earlier in the process, the first-time buyer guide covers the money side of the purchase.

And if you've got a package in hand and a subject deadline approaching, book a 20-minute chat with the FRIVE team. Reading strata packages next to buyers is some of the most useful work we do, and we'd rather you ask before subject removal than after.