What to check before you buy into a BC strata
By Dan Jones ·
Bottom line: read the minutes, the depreciation report, the Form B and the bylaws before you remove subjects, and read the report rather than its summary. What you are looking for is the gap between the work coming due in the next ten years and what is actually in the contingency fund, because that difference gets asked of the owners. Since July 2024 stratas of five or more lots must obtain a depreciation report every five years and can no longer vote to defer, though the catch-up deadline for Penticton is July 2027 rather than the 2026 date that applies to Metro Vancouver. Rental restriction bylaws were banned in 2022 and age bylaws are limited to 55 and over. If the property is leasehold, confirm your lender will finance it before you write.
I am Dan Jones, a REALTOR with Royal LePage Locations West in Penticton, licence number 1118346. Twenty-four years of building before I was licensed in 2004 is why I read an engineer’s report on a building envelope differently than most people do.
A strata is not a worse way to own a home. It is a different one, and almost everything that goes wrong is something that was written down and nobody read.
For a downsizer this matters more than it does for a first-time buyer. You are likely putting a larger share of your net worth into a smaller property, and you have less time to recover from a surprise.
What the documents tell you
When you write an offer on a strata property you get a package. Read all of it. The four that carry the most information:
Minutes, two years of them. The most useful document and the one people skim. You are looking for the same problem appearing repeatedly.
The depreciation report. An engineer’s assessment of major components, what they cost to replace, and when.
The Form B information certificate. The monthly fee, the contingency reserve fund balance, approved special levies, and whether the unit owes money.
The bylaws. Pets, parking, rentals, age, alterations.
The thing worth knowing before you write: the strata is allowed one week to produce a Form B and two weeks for most other records, which can consume a subject removal period before you have read a page. Request them the day the offer is accepted.
Full detail, including the fee caps and the order to read them in: how to read strata documents before you buy.
Depreciation reports, and what changed
Since July 1, 2024, every strata with five or more lots must obtain a depreciation report every five years, and stratas can no longer vote annually to defer getting one. That deferral vote was routine, and it is how buildings arrived at a failing roof with nothing saved. Four lots or fewer remains exempt.
The catch-up deadline for a Penticton strata is July 1, 2027, rather than the July 2026 date that applies to Metro Vancouver and the Capital Regional District. So a local strata may legitimately not have a current report yet, and what matters is what the council has decided to do about it.
Read the report, not the summary. What you want is the gap between what is coming due in the next ten years and what is in the contingency fund, because that difference gets asked of the owners.
Full detail, including the funding models most buyers never look at: depreciation reports and what changed in 2024.
Special levies
A one-time charge to every owner for something the contingency fund cannot cover. Roof, re-pipe, elevator, building envelope.
They are a normal part of strata ownership, not a scandal. The problem is timing. If a levy is approved before your purchase completes, who pays it depends on the contract wording and what you negotiated. Get that in writing before subject removal. Afterwards you are arguing about a bill that has already been issued.
A strata with a healthy contingency fund and a levy every fifteen years is better run than one with low fees and no levies and a thirty-year-old roof.
Strata fees
The question I get is whether they are going up. Generally, across BC, yes. Insurance, construction costs and the new depreciation report requirements all push in the same direction.
But the number on its own tells you nothing. A low fee can mean an efficient building or an underfunded one. Compare the fee against what it covers, the contingency balance, and the work the depreciation report says is coming. A fee that is $80 lower with a $200,000 shortfall behind it is not a saving.
Bare land strata
Common in the Penticton hillside developments, and frequently misunderstood.
Your lot is defined by survey markers rather than by the walls of a building. You own the land and the house on it. The strata owns the roads, the water and sewer infrastructure and the common landscaping, so the fees buy infrastructure rather than a building envelope.
Two consequences people miss. Your house is generally your own insurance responsibility, not the corporation’s, because there is usually no building on the strata plan. And the road is normally the largest common asset, with no municipality standing behind it.
Full detail: what is a bare land strata in BC.
Rentals and age: what the 2022 changes did
Two things changed in November 2022 and a lot of older advice online is now wrong.
Rental restrictions are banned. Strata bylaws restricting rentals became unenforceable. If you are buying with any thought of renting it out later, a common downsizing hedge, that option is now protected by law.
Stratas can still restrict short-term accommodation, which is a separate thing, and municipal short-term rental rules apply on top.
Age restrictions are limited to 55 and over. Any bylaw setting a lower age is invalid. Exemptions exist for live-in caregivers, for people already living there when the bylaw passed, and since May 2023 for children including adult children and for a younger spouse or partner.
If a 55+ bylaw suits what you are looking for, several Penticton developments have one. It is a fact about the property, recorded in the bylaws, and it is worth confirming in the documents rather than relying on how a listing describes it.
Leasehold, and Skaha Hills
Not every property in this area is freehold, and the difference is not cosmetic.
Skaha Hills is on Penticton Indian Band land, developed under a Crown lease designated for a 150 year term. You own the home and hold a lease on the land beneath it. Financing is the part to sort out first, because not every lender writes mortgages on leasehold land and fewer do so on First Nations land.
It has enough moving parts to warrant its own page: buying on leased land in Penticton.
What I do
I read the documents with you, and I say what I think. If the minutes show a council arguing about a roof for two years, you will hear that from me before you remove subjects, not after.
I am a REALTOR®, not a lawyer or an engineer. For leasehold terms, contract wording on special levies, or an engineer’s findings you want to challenge, you want the person whose licence covers it. I will tell you when that point has arrived.
Figures and rules above are current as of September 2026 and come from the BC government. Strata legislation has changed repeatedly since 2022. Check anything you plan to rely on.