Depreciation reports and what changed in 2024
By Dan Jones ·
Bottom line: since July 1, 2024 a strata with five or more lots must obtain a depreciation report every five years and can no longer vote to defer it, and for a Penticton strata the catch-up deadline is July 1, 2027 rather than the 2026 date that applies to Metro Vancouver and the Capital Regional District. That means a South Okanagan strata may legitimately not have a current report yet, and the useful question is not whether one exists but what the council has decided to do about it. When a report does exist, read past the executive summary. The regulation requires at least three cash flow funding models over thirty years, and the number that matters is which one the strata actually adopted, which is recorded in the minutes rather than in the report.
I am Dan Jones, a REALTOR with Royal LePage Locations West in Penticton, licence number 1118346. I spent twenty-four years as a Red Seal journeyman carpenter building houses before I was licensed in 2004, and the reason I read these reports closely is that the components they cover are ones I have installed and replaced.
I am not an engineer. Where a report’s findings need to be challenged or interpreted technically, that is the author’s field or another qualified professional’s, not mine.
What the report is
An assessment by a qualified professional of a strata’s major common components, with condition, remaining life, replacement cost and timing. Roof, building envelope, windows, plumbing, elevators, boilers, parking structure. In a bare land strata, roads, drainage, retaining structures and buried water and sewer lines instead.
The regulation requires it to project anticipated maintenance, repair and replacement costs over thirty years, and to include at least three cash flow funding models for the contingency reserve fund across that period.
Reports must now also contain an executive summary, and coverage of air conditioning and ventilation where the strata has it.
What changed on July 1, 2024
Two things, and the second one matters more than the first.
Every strata with five or more lots must obtain a report every five years. Four or fewer lots remain exempt.
The annual deferral vote is gone. Stratas used to be able to pass a three quarters vote each year to skip getting a report, and many did, routinely. That vote is how buildings arrived at a failing roof with nothing saved, because the document that would have said so was never commissioned.
Removing it is the substantive reform. A strata can still choose not to fund the work a report identifies, but it can no longer choose not to know.
The deadlines, and the Penticton one
For stratas with no report, or a report obtained before December 31, 2020:
| Where the strata is | Must have a report by |
|---|---|
| Metro Vancouver and the Capital Regional District | July 1, 2026 |
| Everywhere else in BC, including Penticton | July 1, 2027 |
For new corporations:
| When the strata was created | First report due |
|---|---|
| On or after July 1, 2024 and before July 1, 2027 | Within 2 years of the first AGM |
| On or after July 1, 2027 | Within 18 months of the first AGM |
Then every five years after that.
So through 2026 and into 2027 you will encounter Penticton stratas without a current report, entirely lawfully. That is not the red flag. The council’s answer is.
“We have budgeted for it and it is scheduled for next spring” and “we have never had one and we are not getting one” are both compliant today and they describe completely different buildings. The minutes tell you which one you are looking at, and that is worth more to you than the report itself would be.
Who is allowed to write one
Since July 1, 2025, reports must come from specified professionals:
- Professional engineers registered with Engineers and Geoscientists BC
- Architects registered with the Architectural Institute of BC
- Applied science technologists registered with ASTTBC
- Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute designates
- Certified reserve planners accredited by the Real Estate Institute of Canada
- Professional quantity surveyors
On October 27, 2025 the list was expanded to add professional licensees engineering, architectural technologists and certified technicians.
Before July 2025 there was no such restriction. So an older report may have been produced by someone with no relevant qualification at all, which is worth knowing when you are weighing how much to trust a 2019 document.
How to actually read one
Skip the executive summary on the first pass. It exists to be readable, and readable summaries round off the parts that would worry you.
Go to the component table. Find everything with a remaining life inside ten years. Those are the items that will be funded by people who own units during your ownership.
Then find the three funding models. This is the part almost nobody reads and it is the most informative section in the document.
The models typically range from a steady, larger contribution that keeps the fund ahead of the work, through to a minimal contribution that relies on special levies as things fail. They are options presented to the strata, not a plan the strata has adopted.
So the question is: which one did they choose? That decision is in the AGM minutes. A strata presented with three models that quietly carried on with the lowest contribution has told you a great deal about what happens when the envelope needs work.
Then compare against the Form B. The contingency reserve fund balance is there. Set it beside what is coming due.
The contingency reserve fund, and why percentages mislead
People want a rule of thumb. There is not a good one.
The regulation requires additional contributions where the fund would fall below 25% of the total annual budgeted operating contribution. That is a statutory floor, not a benchmark for a healthy building. A small, simple, newer building might be genuinely fine near it. A 1978 wood frame building facing envelope and plumbing work would not be.
Judge the balance against the report, not against a percentage. A fund of $400,000 is excellent against $200,000 of ten year work and alarming against $2 million of it.
This is also why a low strata fee is not automatically good news. A fee that is $80 lower each month with a large shortfall behind it is deferred cost, not saving.
What it means if you are selling
A current report showing well funded reserves is an asset, and I will use it.
A strata with no report and a 2027 deadline approaching is a question every informed buyer will ask. If you sit on a council, getting the report done and adopting a sensible funding model is one of the few things that measurably supports every unit’s value in the building, and the cost is shared across all of them.
What I would do as a buyer
- Ask whether a report exists, and if not, what the council has decided.
- Check when it was produced, and by whom, given the July 2025 qualification rules.
- Read the component table for the next ten years.
- Find the three funding models, then find which one the strata adopted in the minutes.
- Compare the reserve balance on the Form B against what is coming.
- Ask for any engineering reports the minutes mention, which are rarely in the package.
How to read strata documents before you buy covers requesting all of that, including the timelines the strata is allowed. The full overview is at what to check before you buy into a BC strata.
Requirements above come from the Strata Property Act and the Strata Property Regulation and are current as of September 2026. Strata legislation has changed repeatedly since 2022. Confirm anything you plan to rely on.
If you are looking at a Penticton strata and want the report read properly, email me at dano007@shaw.ca or call 250.488.0226.