Strata Maintenance & Repairs: What Property Managers Should Expect

Strata Maintenance & Repairs: What Property Managers Should Expect

Strata buildings across Metro Vancouver require consistent annual maintenance, especially for decks, railings, waterproofing, flooring, drywall, painting, and snow removal. Most of the expensive work on a strata is deferred work, not sudden failure.

Common Requests from Strata:

• Stair repairs
• Railings & guardrails
• Fencing
• Water ingress repairs
• Drywall/paint
• Flooring replacements
• Exterior pressure washing
• Snow removal & salting

The maintenance year, roughly

Work that gets scheduled against the weather costs less and goes better than work that gets scheduled against a complaint.

• Spring: walk the building after the wet season. Look at decks, balconies, railings, stucco and siding, and anywhere a stain appeared over winter
• Summer: the window for exterior work. Membranes, coatings, sealants, and paint all want dry surfaces and reasonable temperatures
• Early autumn: gutters, downspouts, drains, and roof debris, before the rain arrives rather than during it
• Winter: response work. Snow and salt, leak call-outs, and anything safety related that cannot wait for spring

Common property or strata lot

Almost every dispute starts here. Roofs, exterior walls, and structural elements are generally common property. Finishes inside a unit are generally the owner’s. Balconies and patios sit in between and are often limited common property, where the strata maintains the structure and the resident handles day to day care.

The bylaws and the strata plan decide the detail, not the general rule. When a leak crosses that boundary, and they usually do, sorting the responsibility question before the repair starts saves an argument once the invoice lands.

Funding and approvals slow everything down

Contractors often quote as though the decision is one person’s. It rarely is. Routine maintenance usually comes out of the operating budget and council can act. Larger work draws on the contingency reserve fund, and a special levy needs a general meeting and a supermajority vote.

Practically, that means scope and pricing have to be firm enough to survive a meeting, and the schedule has to allow for the meeting happening at all. Bring the depreciation report into it, since work already identified there is far easier for a council to justify to owners than something that appears out of nowhere.

Safety items that should not wait

Some items carry liability as well as repair cost, and they belong at the front of the queue:

• Loose, corroded, or under-height guardrails, and railings with wide gaps between members
• Deck and balcony structure where the membrane has failed and water has been sitting in the framing
• Stair treads, nosings, and handrails on common routes
• Trip hazards on walkways, and lighting that has failed on stairs or parkade routes
• Anywhere water is discharging across a pedestrian surface in freezing weather

A guardrail that moves when you lean on it is not a maintenance item to schedule for spring. Document the report date and the response, because that record matters if anyone is hurt.

Working in an occupied building

The technical work is often the easy part. Residents are the constraint. Expect to coordinate written notice for access, elevator booking and floor protection, parking and staging space, water or power shutdowns with advance warning, and noise inside the hours the bylaws allow.

Buildings with a mix of owners and tenants need the notice to reach whoever is actually behind the door. Access is the most common reason a straightforward job takes twice as long as it should.

Snow and ice response

Metro Vancouver snow is unpredictable, which makes response arrangements worth settling before there is any on the ground. Agree what triggers a visit, which surfaces are covered, where cleared snow gets piped, what happens on repeat overnight snowfall, and how salting is handled on surfaces that can be damaged by it. Then keep a dated log of every visit. Check the local bylaw as well, since municipalities commonly require the adjacent public sidewalk to be cleared within a set time after snowfall, and that obligation sits with the property regardless of who was scheduled to attend.

What to ask a contractor for

• Current liability insurance and WorkSafeBC coverage, in writing
• A written scope that states what is excluded, not only what is included
• One point of contact, so council and manager are not chasing separate trades
• A change order process agreed before work starts
• Notice templates the manager can circulate without rewriting them
• Photographs at each stage, particularly of anything that gets covered up
• Who to call outside business hours, and what counts as an emergency

Getting quotes you can actually compare

Three quotes are only useful if they price the same work. Left to their own devices, one contractor prices a membrane replacement, another prices a coating over the existing surface, and a third assumes the framing is sound. The numbers then look wildly different and the council picks the lowest without knowing what it left out.

The fix is to write the scope once and issue the same document to everyone, stating the assumption about what is found underneath and how a variation gets priced if reality differs. Ask each bidder to price the named exclusions separately. That way a difference in the total tells you something about the contractor rather than about the scope they invented.

Records worth keeping

Strata councils turn over and managers change portfolios, so the building’s memory lives in its paperwork. Keep the scope and invoice for every completed job, dated photographs of anything now hidden behind a finish, product data and warranty documents for membranes, coatings, and roofing, and a simple log of what was reported when and what was done about it.

This is unglamorous and it pays off twice. It stops the same investigation being funded a second time, and it is the material an insurer or a warranty provider asks for when a claim depends on showing the building was maintained.

Mistakes that get expensive

• Repainting a stain without finding the source, so the same wall is back on the agenda next winter
• Deferring deck membranes until the framing underneath is part of the job
• Treating the depreciation report as a filing requirement rather than a work plan
• Approving exterior work for a date the weather will not support
• Splitting one repair across separate trades with nobody accountable for the result
• No dated record of when an issue was reported and what was done

Questions we get asked

Can repairs happen while residents stay in place?

Usually yes. Most common property work is done around occupancy, with access arranged unit by unit. Balcony work is the awkward case, because it removes the use of the space and often the door, so residents need real notice.

Do we need a depreciation report to plan this?

You do not need one to fix something. It helps enormously for sequencing and for justifying spend to owners, and it moves the conversation from whether to do the work to when.

What counts as an emergency?

Active water entering the building, anything structural or a failed guardrail, loss of access, and ice on a pedestrian route. Worth agreeing that definition in advance rather than at eleven at night.

Elite Contracting Ltd works with multiple property managers and strata councils delivering reliable year-round services across Surrey and Metro Vancouver. See our fencing work, our landscaping services, our guide to finding and fixing water ingress, or get in touch to talk through a maintenance schedule.