The honest ranges
Three bands cover the BC market. Fees quoted are the monthly management fee per unit, exclusive of amenity/scope adjustments:
- Under 50 units: $35 to $60 per unit, per month
- Smaller buildings pay more per unit because most firms now require a $1,500 to $2,000 monthly minimum to be profitable. A 20-unit building at $50/unit clears that floor; a 20-unit building at $30/unit usually doesn't get picked up.
- 50 to 100 units: $25 to $40 per unit, per month
- The sweet spot for most full-service BC firms. Scale covers fixed costs, per-unit fees drop. Amenities and meeting load are the swing factors here.
- 100+ units: $15 to $30 per unit, per month
- Larger buildings drive per-unit fees down through volume. A 150-unit highrise at $20/unit still produces $3,000 a month in fees, above most firm minimums by a comfortable margin.
What pushes your fee up or down within the band
The calculator applies a scope multiplier on top of the base range. Shifts worth knowing:
- Service level. Limited-service (financial-only) arrangements shift ~20% down. Full-service with maintenance oversight shifts up.
- Amenities. Complex amenities (pool, gym, shared HVAC, parkade with gates) shift ~15% up. Standard residential shifts neutral. No amenities shifts ~5% down.
- Meeting frequency. 9+ meetings per year shifts ~15% up; 5–8 neutral; fewer than 4 shifts down.
- Age of systems. Buildings over 30 years old with active capital projects generate more manager time and typically sit above the mid-band.
- Mixed-use. Buildings with commercial units in the strata can shift up 10–20% because of lease/tenant-mix coordination.
How the calculator works with this
The calculator takes nine inputs (building type, unit count, municipality, year built, current fee per unit, current management company, service level, amenities tier, and meetings-per-year) and returns a realistic fee range tuned to your specific profile. Not a single number. The band tells you whether to investigate your current fee. It can't tell you whether your firm is overcharging.
You get a shareable link at the end. Paste it into a council email, treasurer's notes, or a message to another council member. Your building details are stored in the link itself — no account needed, and it never expires.
What the band does not tell you
BC has about 275 licensed brokerages, and within any size-scope bucket there are firms priced 1.5× above others. Service quality and price correlate loosely, not tightly. A fee within the band can still be too high for the service delivered; a fee above the band can still be fair for a complex building.
The follow-up question is always the same: is your current manager delivering value for what you pay. That's a service question, not a fee question. Run the Should you switch? scorecard for the service dimension; the calculator only answers the fee dimension.
Sources + methodology
These bands come from analysis of roughly 8,000 Canadian strata budgets, cross-checked against BC firm pricing data from BCFSA and SPABC member surveys. BC does not publish a fee survey of its own. Full methodology on the methodology page.