What kind of maintenance is the Strata Council responsible for? 

If you are a new Property Manager or Strata President then this blog post is for you. We have been working with Strata’s for over 35 years now and we wanted to write an article about maintenance and what the Strata Council is responsible for.

The Strata Council is responsible for maintaining common property and limited common property.

Common Property: This consists of any land or buildings shown on the strata plan that is not part of a strata lot. Common property is collectively owned by the strata lot owners. This consists of hallways, recreational amenities, building exteriors such as the fence or the roof, and hallways.

Limited Common Property: This is common property that is to be exclusively used by one or more strata lots. This consists of patios, porches, bay windows…..etc.

Strata lot owners can not be held responsible for the maintenance of common assets and common property. Strata lot owners can be made responsible for the maintenance and repair of limited common property as per their bylaws. If there are no bylaws relating to the repair of the limited common property then the Strata corporation must undertake the repair and maintenance of the common property and limited common property. The strata corporation can also turn the common property into the limited common property if ¾ of the strata votes for it. This change in status can also be achieved by a unanimous resolution.

If you are new to the council or are a new Property Manager or Strata President then a great tool to consider creating is a maintenance calendar. A good maintenance calendar will include things like when the maintenance will be happening, where it will be happening, and how regularly it will occur.

You want to establish all of this and notify all of the strata lot owners via email, written notice, or other mediums. This lets them know what is happening, when it is happening and it will give them an idea of what to expect regarding frequency. This way you won’t have owners and residents filing complaints claiming that they didn’t know that these things would be happening.

Note: Strata lot owners are responsible for all of the work that needs to take place in their suite.

If you found this blog post to be helpful then you may also be interested in checking out our previous post titled “The essential three people on your strata council.” We are sure that other roles are critical to the management and maintenance of an amazing Strata, but these are the big 3 that own most of the responsibility. We wanted to ensure you had a complete understanding of each role. You may be moving into a Strata or starting in one of these roles yourself. We wanted to write this article to serve as an easy-to-understand guide and/or summary about these three essential roles.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions! We pride ourselves on having the best customer service in the industry.