Strata management fee benchmarks: BC 2026

What your council actually pays, and why nobody publishes it

Few BC strata firms publish a fee schedule. No industry body runs a public fee survey. No regulator tracks what firms charge. This guide sets out what is published about BC management fees in 2026, and where each figure comes from.

The bottom line: BC’s average strata management fee is $35 per unit per month, per Eli Report’s April 2025 analysis of about 8,000 Canadian condo communities. That average covers buildings of every size. By size, Wynford, a Metro Vancouver management firm listed on Strata Match, publishes full-service prices from $45 to $60 per unit for 10 to 25 units down to $22 to $30 over 200 units (2026). Some firms also set a monthly minimum: Fort Park, another listed firm, wrote in 2024 that many require $1,500 or even $2,000. On a 10-unit building, $1,500 is $150 a unit. No source publishes fees by city. The three-anchor check at the end of this post takes ten minutes and answers the question a council asks: is our fee in line with what’s published, and if not, why?

The BC strata market is priced by proposal, negotiated in private, and benchmarked against nothing. This guide is a start on that.

What BC strata management actually costs in 2026

The best BC data comes from Eli Report’s April 2025 analysis, which averages last-known fees at about 8,000 Canadian condo communities, rounded to the nearest $5. It puts the average BC management fee at $35 per unit per month. It has no breakdown by building size or city, so the size table below uses one firm’s published prices instead.

That $35 figure matters because it is higher than the $15 to $30 range a Vancouver realtor blog (Strawhomes) has cited. Of the BC fee figures in circulation, the $35 number is the only one tied to a named dataset.

Management is one of the smaller lines in a BC strata budget. The same Eli Report table puts average BC strata fees at $470 per unit per month, with management at $35, insurance at $105, repairs and maintenance at $180 and the Contingency Reserve Fund contribution at $75. Insurance and repairs are much bigger, but management is the line item councils argue about most. It is the easiest to change and the easiest to re-bid.

The Contingency Reserve Fund (CRF) is the savings account every BC strata must keep under Section 92 of the Strata Property Act. The minimum yearly contribution is 10% of the operating-fund contribution budgeted for the current year (Strata Property Regulation 6.1(2)). Management fees do not fund the CRF. They sit on a separate operating-budget line.

The Strata Property Act (SPA) is BC’s governing law for stratas. It sets the rules for budgets, votes, fees, and management deals. The BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) is the regulator. It licenses the strata managers working in BC. Both are primary sources when you’re reading about fees. Both are cited throughout this post.

Management fees are the smallest headline number in a BC strata budget, and the one that generates the most council argument.

Why small buildings pay more per unit

In Wynford’s published prices, a 10 to 25 unit building pays $45 to $60 a unit, against $25 to $35 at 76 to 200 units. A strata manager still has to attend meetings, handle financials, coordinate emergencies and keep records whether the building has 10 doors or 40. Where a firm sets a monthly minimum, the per-unit number jumps further.

A $1,500 monthly minimum split across a 10-unit building is $150 per unit per month. That is more than four times the BC average of $35. The 10-unit building is not necessarily being gouged. It is paying the fixed cost of a licensed manager’s time across fewer doors. This is why small councils should ask for the monthly minimum, the included meeting count, and the extra-fee schedule before comparing proposals.

$1,500 to $2,000 a month: the minimum Fort Park said many firms require (2024). Ask each firm for its own, in writing.

Manager pay helps explain the minimum. CHOA Executive Director Tony Gioventu has said the portfolio sweet spot for a single manager is about 500 units. Glassdoor’s Vancouver salary data pegs the average strata manager at $68,614 per year. The spread runs from $53,973 to $97,669. A manager’s pay has to come from fees on a few hundred units, so a 10-unit building at the average per-unit rate can’t cover its share of that manager’s time.

CHOA is the Condominium Home Owners’ Association of BC. It is the province’s main strata-owner advocacy body. It is a main source of council-facing guidance. Its bulletins on fee dynamics are among the few public BC sources on this market. PAMA is the Professional Association of Managing Agents. It is the body BCFSA appoints to run required re-licensing courses. PAMA membership and the CPRPM designation signal training investment. Neither is a price signal.

BC is short of experienced strata managers. Fort Park wrote in 2024 that not enough new licensees are coming into the field to keep up with demand. That shortage gives firms room to raise fees, drop clients they can’t serve at a profit, and choose which buildings they accept.

Pricing by building size

The table shows the full-service prices Wynford, a Metro Vancouver management firm listed on Strata Match, publishes by building size (2026). They are one firm’s prices, not a survey. The monthly totals are the per-unit price times the unit count. No band is published under 10 units.

Source check, November 6, 2026: Wynford has taken this page down. Its current Vancouver page gives one illustrative range, $25 to $55 per unit per month, with no size bands.

Where a firm sets a $1,500 monthly minimum, it is more than the published price for buildings under about 33 to 47 units ($1,500 divided by $45, and by $32).

How do these brackets apply to a specific Metro Vancouver building?

For instance, a 24-unit Burnaby lowrise in the 10 to 25 band comes to $1,080 to $1,440 a month at $45 to $60 a unit. A 75-unit New Westminster concrete midrise comes to $2,400 to $3,375 a month at $32 to $45. A 180-unit Coquitlam tower comes to $4,500 to $6,300 a month at $25 to $35.

The per-unit fee drops as units scale because much of a manager’s work is per building, not per unit. If a small building is quoted more than the published price, ask whether a monthly minimum is the reason.

When a building is small, the minimum can matter more than the per-unit price, so ask for it in writing. Fort Park wrote in 2024 that many strata corporations under 50 units will have a hard time finding a management company, and suggested looking for a firm that specializes in smaller buildings, perhaps with limited service.

What’s included vs what’s extra

Under section 43 of the Real Estate Services Rules, a firm’s written agreement with a strata must describe its services and set out what it will be paid and when. Read the extras as closely as the base fee.

Included in the base monthly fee (based on BCFSA guidance and published firm materials):

• Financial management: budgeting, monthly statements, fee collection, accounts payable
• Administrative support: correspondence, record-keeping, owner database
• Bylaw enforcement assistance
• Meeting preparation and attendance: usually one AGM plus a set number of council meetings
• Maintenance coordination and vendor management
• 24/7 emergency contact line
• Insurance renewal coordination
• Strata Property Act compliance guidance

Commonly billed as extras:

• Form B, Form F, and Form E certificates: the regulated maximum for Form B is $35 plus up to $0.25 per page for copies (Strata Property Regulation 4.4), and for Form F it is $15 (Regulation 6.10). Councils may also see platform, rush, courier, or admin charges depending on the contract and delivery method.
• Additional meetings beyond the contracted number
• After-hours emergency response beyond initial contact
• Special project management: major repairs, envelope remediation, capital projects
• Legal coordination and Civil Resolution Tribunal attendance
• Move-in and move-out administration: CHOA cites $100 as a common example
• Rush document fees: ask the amount in writing before you sign
• Year-end audit preparation support

The Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) is BC’s online tribunal for most strata disputes. It publishes its strata decisions online. Showing up at a CRT hearing on your strata’s behalf is almost always a billable extra in a standard management deal.

Fee-hike dynamics are the third surprise. For instance, CHOA Bulletin 300-977, published January 2022, logged a Richmond strata hit with a 50% management fee hike after only two years. Tony Gioventu’s written guidance is that firms can only charge what is in the service agreement. In practice, budget approval alone does not green-light fee hikes. A council that signs a two-year deal should expect the same monthly rate for the full two years. Some firms still bake in inflation clauses or pre-set hikes over three-to-five-year contracts. A councillor reviewing a 2026 proposal should read the escalation clause before reading the monthly fee. See our companion strata management contract checklist for the clauses that matter most.

Geographic variation across Metro Vancouver

Honest answer first: no fine-grained city-level data on management fees is public in BC. No firm publishes pricing by city. Reddit threads asking for Burnaby-vs-Vancouver-vs-Surrey fee matchups turn up almost no data. Fees are buried in private deals, and no industry body collects them.

Total strata fees, which include insurance, maintenance and CRF contributions as well as management, do differ from one area to another. But no public source reports the management slice of those totals by city. A higher total fee on the North Shore than in Surrey may come from insurance, building age or amenities, and tells you little about the management line.

We don’t have enough published BC data to tell you what a Burnaby fee is versus a Vancouver fee. Nobody does. The size bracket is the honest signal.

No source measures how much geography moves management fees. Building size does move them: in Wynford’s prices, a 10 to 25 unit building pays about twice the per-unit rate of one over 200 units ($45 to $60, against $22 to $30). If you’re benchmarking a specific building, start with its size. A 15-unit Vancouver townhouse and a 15-unit Maple Ridge townhouse can both run into the same kind of monthly minimum.

What drives fees up (and down)

Five things move BC strata management fees. In our view, in rough order of impact:

1. Building size. A 30-unit building pays $32 to $45 a unit in Wynford’s published prices, against $25 to $35 at 150 units.
2. Monthly minimum. Where a firm sets one, a $1,500 minimum sets the total fee for many buildings under about 33 to 47 units, not the per-unit math. Fort Park tied the minimums it reported to rising rent, staffing and insurance costs.
3. Manager shortage. Not enough new managers are entering the field (Fort Park, 2024). Firms pass that cost through as a price hike, dropped clients, or both. Councils switching in 2026 are bidding into a tight market.
4. Amenity and service load. Concrete highrises with pools, gyms, and security desks take more manager time than a 30-unit lowrise with a shared lobby. Firms may price workload, not just doors.
5. Building age. Older buildings drive more vendor coordination, more envelope and roof issues, and more CRT risk. For example, a 1985 concrete tower usually needs more of a manager’s time than a 2020 wood-frame building.

Price competition is strongest for mid-size and large buildings. For small buildings, with firms reporting minimums and Fort Park warning that buildings under 50 units struggle to find a firm, there is little room to bargain below the minimum. On tax: Budget 2026 planned to extend PST to non-residential real estate services, including strata management for non-residential property, from October 1, 2026. Services for residential property were left out, and the Province has since paused the expansion. If your strata has commercial lots, ask your firm how any future change would apply to that share.

How to check whether your fee is in line

Compare your per-unit monthly fee against three anchors. The first is Eli Report’s BC average of $35. The second is the published price for your building’s size in the table above. The third is any monthly minimum, if your building is small. If your fee is far from all three, ask the firm to explain it.

The tactical check runs in four steps:

1. Divide your current monthly management fee by your unit count. That is your per-unit rate.
2. Find your building size bracket in the table above and compare.
3. If your building is small, ask whether the firm has a monthly minimum and what it is. A fee well below the published price may rise at renewal, so ask how long it holds.
4. If your building is over 75 units and your per-unit rate is above the published price for its size, ask two competing firms to quote the same scope.

A faster version of that check lives in the Fee check. It takes your unit count and returns the published price for that size, with Eli Report’s average beside it and the effect of a monthly minimum where that applies. Councils can use it to check a renewal bid before an AGM.

If the benchmark check shows a gap, the next step is not to switch firms. Instead, check whether the current firm is delivering on the contract. Our strata manager performance scorecard covers the 10 traits that predict satisfaction. They are listed in order of real-world impact. Fee is not in the top three. A firm at the bottom of the market is rarely worth switching to. A mid-market firm with great communication is almost always worth keeping.

Before any council commits to switching, two talks are worth having with the current firm. The first is on scope creep: what’s in the base fee now that wasn’t two years ago, or vice versa. The second is on portfolio load: how many buildings the current manager carries against CHOA’s 500-unit sweet spot. The Fee check gives council a sourced number to bring to both.

The receipt: printable 2026 Metro Vancouver benchmark table

Provincial anchors and their sources:

• BC average management fee: $35 per unit per month (Eli Report, 2025)
• BC average strata fees: $470 per unit per month (Eli Report, 2025)
• Monthly minimum many firms require: $1,500 or even $2,000 (Fort Park, 2024)
• Manager portfolio sweet spot: 500 units (CHOA)
• Vancouver strata manager average salary: $68,614 per year (Glassdoor)

The three-anchor check:

1. Your per-unit rate against the BC average of $35
2. Your per-unit rate against the published price for your building’s size
3. Your monthly total against any minimum the firm sets

If your fee is far from all three, ask the firm to explain it. Then check it in the Fee check and decide whether to renegotiate or switch.

For more about how Strata Match builds these benchmarks and why we publish them openly, see about Strata Match and our methodology.

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Related tools for your council

• Before you benchmark, check firm performance: the 6-question scorecard on your current firm. High fees can be the symptom, not the problem. Two minutes, no email.
• Browse BC firms by city. Each row shows whether its licence and strata service are confirmed. Start with Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, or your municipality.
• 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 or financial advice.

• Eli Report, “Why are condo fees so different across Canada?” (April 2025)
• Wynford, “The True Cost of Strata Management Fees in Metro Vancouver: 2026 Benchmarks”
• Fort Park Property Management, “Why strata management companies fire their clients” (March 2024)
• CHOA bulletin 300-977, management fees and increases (January 2022)
• Glassdoor, strata manager salaries in Vancouver
• Strata Property Act, Part 6: finances
• Strata Property Regulation, s.4.4, 6.1 and 6.10
• Real Estate Services Rules (B.C. Reg. 209/2021)
• Province of BC, PST on non-residential real estate services
• Province of BC, Notice 2026-001 to providers of professional services