The BC strata management contract review checklist

The contract is where every bad transition begins

A BC strata management agreement must state services, fees, term, termination and delegated authority before service starts, unless the strata waives the written agreement (Real Estate Services Rules s.43, current to November 3, 2026). Use the 40-item checklist below to compare those terms with the current contract.

Your council has picked a new management firm. The fee looks fair, references checked out, and the contract is on the table. Most councils sign in a week, and that week sets the terms for the next three years. What follows is a line-item review checklist built for BC. Forty questions, grouped by type, ready for a council meeting.

Nobody wins at the contract stage by reading faster. You win it by reading in the right order.

Why contract review matters now

The stakes on a BC strata contract rose sharply from 2020 to 2024. The Financial Institutions Act reforms banned insurance referral fees in 2020. BCFSA took over from the dissolved RECBC in 2021. Fort Park, a BC management firm listed on Strata Match, wrote in March 2024 that many firms now require a monthly minimum of $1,500 or even $2,000, whatever the building’s size. Contracts written in 2018 may no longer match current pricing or disclosure expectations. Contracts written in 2026 are more expensive and more specific.

The other shift is the termination wave. BC is short of strata managers, so firms can choose which buildings they take on. Unlike five years ago, management firms are actively “firing” clients who don’t pay well. Reddit threads from BC councils show the same pattern from the other side. If you’re reading a new contract, the firm has more choice than it did five years ago. A clear contract is how both sides know what was agreed.

BCFSA is the British Columbia Financial Services Authority. It’s the BC regulator that licenses strata management brokerages. It also enforces RESA. RESA is the Real Estate Services Act. It sets the rules for written service agreements and third-party pay disclosure. CHOA is the Condominium Home Owners’ Association, BC’s largest owner advocacy body. VISOA is the Vancouver Island Strata Owners Association. It’s the Island counterpart with strong contract-review commentary. These four bodies publish most of the practical guidance on what BC contracts should look like.

The contract is the only place where you still hold the pen. Once signed, you are a client.

Before you read the contract: the three documents you need

You cannot review a management contract on its own. The biggest mistake is reading the new contract without three other documents on the same table. Pull these first, in this order:

1. The current management contract. Even if it’s expired. Comparing clause by clause shows what has changed. For example, a 2% fee escalator that became CPI-plus-2%. Or a 60-day notice period that became 90 days. Or an auto-renewal clause that got a “silent renewal” gloss.
2. The firm’s RESA disclosure form. Under sections 56 and 58 of the Real Estate Services Rules, the firm must disclose in writing any pay or benefit it gets from a third party: vendors, insurance brokers, banks. If the contract is in front of you and this form isn’t, pause. Ask for it in writing.
3. The insurance broker’s disclosure. Required by section 3 of the Financial Products Disclosure Regulation and the Insurance Council of BC’s Code of Conduct. Since November 1, 2020, it must name the insurer and give the broker’s commission on a strata policy, or how the commission is worked out plus an estimate.

Once these three are in hand, the new contract is readable. Without them, you are reading lone clauses against no baseline.

If the firm won’t give you the RESA disclosure and the insurance disclosure before you sign, that is the answer.

Fee structure clarity

What fee-structure clauses should a BC strata council check first?

The monthly fee is the clause everybody reads. The clauses that cost councils money sit right next to it. Eli Report’s 2025 analysis of about 8,000 Canadian condo communities puts BC’s average management fee at $35 per unit per month. Many firms also set a monthly minimum of $1,500 or even $2,000, Fort Park wrote in 2024, no matter the unit count. For a 15-unit building, that floor works out to $100 to $133 per unit, about three to four times the average. Councils that don’t confirm the floor in writing can meet it on invoice three, when a $1,875 charge lands for what the proposal called “around $1,500.”

Fee-structure checklist items:

• Is the monthly fee stated as a dollar amount, a per-unit amount, and a minimum floor? All three should appear.
• Is the fee increase formula clear (fixed %, CPI-indexed, or open-ended), and what’s the cap?
• What triggers a raise: term renewal, calendar year, or events like unit count changes?
• Is there an inflation clause, and does it auto-apply without council approval?
• If the building adds units (for example, a strata lot divided under SPA Section 259), does the per-unit rate reset?
• Is the first-year fee honeymooned, and what is the Year 2 number in writing?

Bring to a lawyer if the fee formula points to a discretionary “management review” without a cap. Escalate if the minimum floor isn’t disclosed at all. Benchmark against BC fee data before sign-off, not after.

Included vs excluded services

What does the base monthly fee cover?

A typical BC strata management contract includes a core set of services in the base fee: financial admin, monthly statements, fee collection, bylaw support, one AGM per year, a set number of council meetings, vendor coordination, and a 24/7 emergency line. Everything outside that core is billed separately, and in published service schedules the list of add-ons can run long.

Included-vs-excluded checklist:

• Is there a written list of included services, numbered? (Not a paragraph. A list.)
• How many council meetings are included, and what’s the overtime rate for extra ones?
• What’s the Form B fee? The legal cap is $35 plus up to $0.25/page for copies (Strata Property Regulation s.4.4).
• Are rush document fees capped, or tagged as “prevailing rate”?
• Is the move-in/move-out admin fee named? CHOA bulletins cite $100 as a typical example.
• Is after-hours emergency response billed past the first contact?
• Is special-project management (envelope work, major capital projects) billed hourly, or as a percent of project cost? The second option is expensive.
• Is CRT or court attendance billed as an extra, and at what hourly rate?

Termination clauses

What does the Strata Property Act allow in a termination clause?

Section 39 of the Strata Property Act is the rule. The strata can always end the contract under its own termination clause, or decline to renew it at the end of term, with no owners’ vote (s.39(2)). On top of that, s.39(1) lets the strata cancel on two months’ notice, without penalty, after a three-quarter vote at a general meeting. For years, VISOA has warned that standard contracts bury these rights under dense language. Many councils feel trapped. They aren’t; they just read the contract after signing, not before.

Termination checklist items:

• What notice does the termination clause give council? The statutory route under Section 39(1) of the Strata Property Act is two months’ notice after a three-quarter vote, whatever the contract says.
• Is there a penalty clause for early termination? A penalty can’t apply when the strata cancels under s.39(1) (three-quarter vote, two months’ notice). It may still apply if council ends the contract early under the contract’s own terms, so firms still include them.
• Are grounds for instant termination named (fraud, licence loss, insolvency)?
• Can council end the contract under its own terms without an owners’ vote, and on what notice?
• Is the document-return timeline stated? Section 37 requires return within four weeks after the contract ends. A firm that fails to return them owes the strata $1,000 (Strata Property Regulation s.4.3).
• Is there an auto-renewal clause with a silent renewal trap (renews unless notice given 90+ days before expiry)?
• On firm-led termination, what notice does the firm owe the strata? (Section 39(1)(b) lets the firm cancel on two months’ notice.)

Bring to a lawyer if the contract imposes termination penalties, extends notice beyond 60 days, or narrows the Section 37 document return. Before you ever reach a termination dispute, our 60-day transition playbook walks through how to run the clause cleanly.

Insurance requirements

Who coordinates insurance renewal under the contract?

Insurance is one of the largest operating costs for a BC strata. Eli Report’s data shows insurance at $105 per unit per month, three times the management fee line. Since September 2020, section 178 of the Financial Institutions Act has barred insurers and brokers from paying anyone who isn’t an insurance licensee, including a management firm, for referring strata insurance business. Since November 1, 2020, brokers have also had to disclose their commission on a strata policy to the strata corporation (Financial Products Disclosure Regulation s.3). Contracts written before 2020 often said nothing about these payments. Check that yours names them in plain words.

Insurance checklist items:

• Who runs the renewal: the firm, a named broker, or the council directly?
• Is the insurance broker named in the contract, with licensing disclosure?
• Does the firm disclose in writing whether it gets any pay from the broker, the insurer, or a related party?
• Is the ban on insurance referral fees (per the 2020 FIA reforms) named in the contract?
• Does the contract grant the firm authority to bind insurance without council approval?
• Are firm-provided insurance quotes compared, or single-source?
• Is there a standing duty to provide three quotes annually?

Bring to a lawyer if the contract grants binding authority to the firm without a written council resolution. Escalate if the broker disclosure stays silent on commission structure.

Transition obligations

What does the firm owe on the day the contract ends?

Transition obligations are the clauses councils forget about until they need them. A handover stalls when the outgoing firm’s contract doesn’t spell out file format: a PDF dump of 800 unnamed files meets a vague clause but is useless in practice, and the new firm cannot rebuild the ledger from scanned cheques.

Transition checklist items:

• Is the handover period set (Day 1 to Day 14 post-termination)?
• Is document format named (editable Excel ledger, not PDF; raw email export, not screenshots)?
• Is there a named point of contact for handover questions during the two-week window?
• Does the firm owe vendor re-intros (cleaning, elevator, landscaping, insurance)?
• Is final audit prep included, or billed as an extra?
• Does the outgoing firm owe a reconcile meeting with the incoming firm?
• Is the owner database (emails, tenant records, arrears history) handed over in machine-readable form?
• Are digital keys (portal admin, bank signers, CRA accounts) handed over on a set date?

Communication expectations

What communication SLA should appear in the contract?

Communication failures are a recurring complaint in BC strata management. The contract is where the SLA becomes enforceable. Without a written response-time promise, a council is left arguing with a firm whose email inbox is shared across 10+ managers.

Communication checklist items:

• Is the response-time SLA stated in hours or business days (24h, 48h, 72h)?
• Does the SLA split emergency, urgent, and non-urgent cases?
• Is there a direct email and phone for the named manager, or a shared inbox?
• Who handles messages when the manager is on vacation or leaves the firm?
• Is there a portal access promise (owner portal, council portal), and are documents uploaded within a set window?
• On manager turnover, does the firm owe the council written notice and a handover meeting?
• Is the manager’s in-room attendance (AGM, council meetings) a contract duty, or “best efforts”?

Third-party compensation disclosure

What does RESA require the firm to disclose about vendor kickbacks?

RESA is the Real Estate Services Act, the umbrella law BCFSA enforces. Its rules require written disclosure of any pay or benefit a brokerage gets from a third party while providing strata management services (Real Estate Services Rules ss.56 and 58). Tony Gioventu (CHOA) has repeatedly warned that hidden vendor kickbacks are one of the two or three most common failure modes in BC. BCFSA’s published discipline rulings show disclosure failures are being sanctioned.

Third-party pay checklist items:

• Does the contract cite RESA disclosure duties by section?
• Is there a written ban on hidden vendor pay to firm staff?
• Are preferred-vendor ties disclosed, with commission rates if any?
• Does the contract grant the council audit rights over vendor picks?
• Is there an anti-bribery clause covering staff personally (not just the firm)?
• Must the firm present multiple quotes for contracts over a set dollar threshold?
• Does the contract name who approves vendor picks: the firm alone, the council, or both?

Bring to a lawyer if the contract is silent on third-party pay. Escalate if preferred-vendor language is vague. A vague clause leaves both sides guessing, so ask for plain wording.

Liability and indemnification

What liability exposure does a BC strata carry under the contract?

Liability clauses are where a lawyer earns the $2,000 CHOA quotes for contract review. Look for three things: a professional indemnity carve-out, a limit-of-liability cap, and an indemnity clause running to the firm from the strata. All three need a careful read. A liability cap set at “three months of fees” is useless if the firm mishandles a $200,000 special levy.

Liability checklist items:

• Is the firm’s pro liability insurance named, with minimum coverage?
• Is the liability cap stated, and is it fair next to the firm’s fee and the strata’s budget?
• Does the indemnity clause run both ways, or only from the strata to the firm?
• Is gross negligence carved out of the liability cap? (It should be.)
• Does the contract honour the firm’s fiduciary duty under BCFSA rules?
• Are duties under the Strata Property Act affirmed, not disclaimed?
• Is Errors & Omissions coverage named and current?

Bring to a lawyer. Liability and indemnity are the clauses non-lawyers consistently misread. “Indemnify” and “hold harmless” mark two different legal postures, so a contract that conflates them leaves the strata exposed.

Record-keeping and access

What records can the council access under the Strata Property Act?

Section 35 of the Strata Property Act lists the records a strata must keep. That covers minutes, financial records, bylaws, contracts, insurance papers, and emails. Section 36 lets owners (and tenants with assigned rights, or anyone an owner authorizes in writing) inspect them or get copies within two weeks of a request, or one week for bylaws and rules. The management contract cannot narrow these rights, but it can add friction through pricing, format, and process, so check those terms.

Record-keeping checklist items:

• Does the contract cite Section 35 and Section 36 by reference?
• Is the two-week copy window from Section 36 written in?
• Are copy fees capped at 25 cents a page (Strata Property Regulation s.4.2)?
• Is digital record access included, or billed as a premium?
• Does the firm keep records in a format the strata can read without the firm’s software?
• On termination, are records returned in editable native format, not PDF?
• Does the firm agree that records belong to the strata, not the firm?

Renewal mechanics

Does the contract auto-renew, and on what terms?

Auto-renewal traps are a common contract complaint in BC. The trap is usually a silent renewal clause. The contract auto-renews for a new 3-year term unless the council gives 90 days’ written notice before the expiry date. Miss the 90-day window, and the council is locked in for another three years. VISOA has flagged this pattern for the better part of a decade.

Renewal mechanics checklist items:

• Is there an auto-renewal clause? If so, for how long?
• Is the notice-to-not-renew window fair (30 days, not 90+)?
• Is there an annual fee-review right for the council?
• Does the contract force a full re-deal at renewal, or roll forward silently?
• Is a fee-review trigger named (CPI threshold, scope change, unit count change)?
• Can either party opt for a shorter renewal term?
• Is the council told in writing before the auto-renewal window closes?

Bring to a lawyer if the auto-renewal window exceeds 60 days. Escalate if the renewal carries an embedded fee bump the council cannot contest. The RFP template we publish is designed to surface these clauses before the contract is drafted, not after.

When to bring in a lawyer

Many councils skip legal review. CHOA estimates it at roughly $2,000. For a building paying $2,000 to $3,000 a month, that review protects a $24,000 to $36,000 annual contract.

Bring a lawyer in when any of these appear in the contract:

1. Termination penalties, long notice periods, or anything that limits the strata’s section 39 cancellation right
2. Auto-renewal windows longer than 60 days, or “silent” renewal language
3. Fee-bump formulas that cite open-ended “management review” without caps
4. Indemnity running only from the strata to the firm
5. Liability caps below three months of annual fees
6. Missing RESA third-party pay disclosure
7. Silence on Section 35/36 record rights
8. Insurance clauses giving binding power without council approval
9. Handover duties with no file-format rules
10. Anything that doesn’t read like plain English

At $2,500 a month, a three-year contract costs $90,000. A $2,000 legal review is about two percent of that.

The receipt: the 40-item contract review checklist

Screenshot this table, bring it to the council meeting, and work through it row by row. There are forty items, grouped by the ten categories above. If any single item can’t be answered from the contract itself, the answer is simple: “ask the firm in writing before signing.”

If you’re comparing the firm behind this contract with others, see your top 5: the firms that fit your building, ranked with reasons. Strata Match doesn’t draft contracts or replace your lawyer.

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Related tools for your council

• Before you review a new contract, rate the incumbent: the 6-question scorecard returns a band-specific next step. If the answer is “stay,” save the $2,000 legal review for the next cycle.
• Browse BC strata management firms by city and compare the contract language of firms in your municipality: Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, or your area.
• Benchmark the fees being quoted: run the proposed fee against comparable BC buildings before you sign.
• See up to five firms that fit your building, ranked with reasons.

Sources

Checked against the sources below on November 6, 2026 (BC Laws: Acts current to October 27, 2026; regulations to November 3, 2026). This is general information, not legal advice.

• Strata Property Act, Part 4: governance, records and contracts
• Real Estate Services Rules (B.C. Reg. 209/2021)
• Real Estate Services Act
• Financial Products Disclosure Regulation
• Financial Institutions Act, s.178
• Strata Property Regulation, s.4.2 to 4.4
• Eli Report, “Why are condo fees so different across Canada?” (April 2025)
• Fort Park Property Management, “Why strata management companies fire their clients” (March 2024)
• CHOA bulletins