How Strata Councils Navigate Aging Buildings, Rising Costs, And Legal Risk with Katherine Uppall

Ever wondered who’s actually safeguarding a multi‑million‑dollar condo tower when the council is made of volunteers? We sit down with strata lawyer Katherine Uppal to unpack how buildings age, costs climb, and decisions get made under the Strata Property Act—often with limited time, thin records, and 200 skeptical neighbors watching.

We dig into the governance flashpoints that derail progress: contested elections, proxy fights, and quorum drama that can stall urgent repairs. Katherine explains the real legal standard—reasonableness—and why councils acting in good faith are broadly protected, even as owners push back on special levies. From there, we get concrete: depreciation reports that nobody reads, building envelope condition assessments that reveal water ingress risks, and the good‑better‑best framework that helps councils stage work without blowing reserves.

Money talk is unavoidable. Flat fees feel good until inflation, utilities, and service contracts spike, turning “savings” into deficits and emergency levies. Katherine shares a smarter path: incremental fee increases, transparent town halls, and contracts with real safeguards. We explore how experienced contractors navigate the three‑quote ritual, why two‑page agreements sink seven‑figure projects, and how to align engineers, managers, and owners long before a three‑quarter vote.

The surprises keep coming: solariums and enclosed balconies that were never approved, records lost between council turnovers, and the parking space that probably isn’t yours. Katherine breaks down common property versus strata lot responsibilities, why leases complicate parking, and how clear bylaws and better documentation prevent costly disputes. With developer windups cooling, councils can’t wait for a buyout; elevators still fail, membranes still crack, and rain still wins.

If you care about sustainable strata living—whether you’re on council, a property manager, a contractor, or an owner—this conversation offers the playbook: read the reports, plan the cash, stage the work, and communicate like your building depends on it. Subscribe, share this with your council, and leave a review to tell us the smartest move your building made this year.

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Transcript

Meet Kathryn Upple, Strata Lawyer

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay, I am here now with Kathryn Puppel. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I'm well. Thanks, James. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:06

I'm doing good. I'm doing good with the show. Um you're a lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to the Site Visit Podcast, Leadership and Perspective from Construction. Your host, James Baldwin.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Recorded live from the dope floor, a building Vancouver, Vancouver, Vancouver.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Okay, so you're a partner at uh quite pronounced it is it um Lay, Both, and Upple?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Blay both Upple, L L P, yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Both. Why did I say Both? Maybe because it's a last name. You think it's Both? Yeah. Both. Oh, both. Cool. And um, so you guys are, you guys focused on obviously a lot of the Strata stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

And um we have, I was very interested to talk to you because of my experience being in Stratas, and not so much just the politics around it, but just in terms of sustainability of having a group of people who are not necessarily fit in many cases, to make decisions for a large building of a lot of real estate. And so I wanted to chat with you about um that as a sort of a paradigm in general. Sure. And then also how um strata fees with you know people getting older in buildings, people with fixed incomes, but yet there's not enough contingency, and then what do we do? And labor costs are going up, material costs are going up, maintenance costs are going up, and strata fees can only go up so much before people start screaming.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

So yeah, that's a lot. There's a lot to talk about there.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

That's a lot to talk about. So what I wanted to first talk to you about is is there ever another model? Have you heard of any other models other than we have the basic one right now. You have your strata management company that's sort of that bifurcation of all of the paperwork and all the min.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

And then you have some platforms like some online platforms, I think, like what's what's like homeowner portals or whatever else they'll call it. Yeah. And then you have obviously your strata council.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yep.

The Volunteer Governance Dilemma

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Um so that sort of model uh have you heard of anything else that is lighter than people who aren't necessarily that uh experienced enough to make big decisions?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah, I mean, I have a few thoughts about it. That is the model that seems to be prevalent in British Columbia and across Canada. Um, but you know, don't forget, we have, I think, something north of 30,000 strata corporations in British Columbia, and we uh they're not all managed. We don't have that many managers. So you also have self-managed strata corporations, and those elected members of the community are now making all of the decisions and doing all of the accounting and all of the paperwork and meeting all of their obligations under the Strata Property Act with very little guidance.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Um, and so it's an interesting thing to think about in terms of, you know, what I tell my clients sometimes when they're making a decision that might be emotional for them is step back for a second, you're managing a corporation. This is not just your home or something very personal to you, but you have to take a second and remember this is a small business. You typically have multi-million dollar budgets that you're administrating every every fiscal year. And so, what is a decision that is reasonable in the circumstances? Um, there is a provision in the Strata Property Act that allows uh council members to accept pay remuneration if it's approved. I have seen it happen one time in my career, and I've been doing strata work for about eight years now. Right. So it's a very underutilized and under-considered provision, I think. Um, but the reality is if you're gonna have volunteer people of a community making these big decisions, they're not always gonna be the most um practical or perhaps educated decisions depending on who you have from that community making up your strata council.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Right, yeah. So what what are most of the clients that you have, what are they engaging for typically?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Oh, everything from um governance disputes, so stratic corporation governance is a big piece of it.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Okay, can you give me an example of something we could talk about?

Disputes, Quorum, And Voting Fights

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah, so let's say there's even an issue at a general meeting in terms of the election, who's been elected, who's who's actually leading the straticorporation right now? What is the the directing mind of it? So when you get these factions of owners in a really contentious general meeting, they might not agree with the voting procedure. They might not think that that um you know enough people met quorum, they might have an opinion as to proxies. So these all come out in these governance disputes that that happen. Um on the other side of it, a lot of repair and maintenance questions. So something you kind of touched on earlier, aging buildings. We now need a full building envelope project, but our owners don't have money. So what do we do? And there are provisions in the Strata Property Act, but it doesn't mean that I can find the money for you. I can help you figure out how to uh bridge the gap between your majority vote and maybe the three-quarter vote you need. There's a provision in the act for that, but it doesn't solve the money problem, which is something you mentioned earlier.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah, I mean then you get into a special levy situation and then people aren't happy.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

And then people aren't happy. And so typically you can't get that three-quarter vote because people don't want to spend the money. But if you have an aging building or if you have the the legal tests, if you have these components that um merit attention, then the act will allow you to go to court and have a court direct that those be done no matter what. Um so it can get pretty contentious.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Yeah, wow. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

And then I guess I'll say the other kind of things we see often are um contract disputes, right? Strata corporations with the assistance of their managers from time to time are sometimes entering into multi-million dollar repair contracts.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Oh yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

And it's interesting because sometimes, my in my experience, the contract is two or three pages. And then they come to us when things aren't working very well, or they they didn't have those safeguards in on the front end. So, you know, the the lawyer in me will always say, get advice early, get it checked before you sign it. But from time to time, these volunteers don't have time for that. They just, the project needs to happen, they got three quotes, that quote set seems the best, let's sign it and let's go, while one year down the road that might not have been such a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

So, seeing as we at the site visit here, we represent the community of construction companies. Um that's why you're here today, of course. Um, do you think that a lot of these subtrades and these specialty contractors, they see this strata work, this they know that they're being gamed on this three-quote thing?

Special Levies And Court Orders

SPEAKER_00 7:30

I find that the contractors that are doing strata work are very familiar with the landscape of strata's. They know it's a bit of a game. I mean, they're gonna have to probably come out to town hall meetings before your actual general meeting for the three-quarter vote. I mean, we're living in a in a world right now when everyone's craving information, and typically information's available at their fingertips. But if there's been quotes and discussions between council and contractors that owners are not privy to, try taking that to a three-quarter vote without looping all these people into what's going on. So oftentimes the engineers that I work with, consultants that will be on projects, they've had to go to one, two, three town hall meetings to answer questions to 200 owners before they can even be in front of them for that vote. Um, because it's a little bit, I'd I'd actually say it's more work than a typical client because you're trying to please 200 people. Oh, yeah, it's way more. It's tough. And so you'll oftentimes see, in my experience, the same names in terms of the engineers and the construction, you know, the building envelope guys or the parquet repair guys. You kind of will see the same names come through your desk because they're very familiar with that world.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Okay. So what is the um so the strata, the BC Strata Act, right? Is that what it's called? Uh the BC Strata Act?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

It's called the Strata Property Act.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

The Strata Property Act, okay. So um what is, let's just say that you've got um a big envelope job that needs to be done. It's millions of dollars, it's a big project, and somebody pushed very hard for this one particular trade to do it, contractor, and it didn't go well. What's the liability of that council member? You know like if everything went well.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the the beauty of the strata framework is that one person doesn't really have the ability to push something through. So so you could look back at that one person and say, well, they were the big proponent, we we trusted them. Yeah. But nothing, so at the council level, everything has to get a majority vote before it goes ahead for whatever the direction is. In terms of a funding project and that amount, whether they're seeking money from their contingency reserve fund or from their uh or they're raising money by way of a special levy or some combination, they'll need the three-quarter vote. Right. And so, you know, the the way I actually see it have has played out in my practice is the opposite. Um, owners will go to Strata and say you waited too long to do something. So we want to hold you personally responsible for how much it costs now.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Or you failed to repair and maintain. And because of that, we've got the last council, you mean?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

And then there's still owners.

Contracts, Safeguards, And Pitfalls

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, last council even courtesy. Does that happen? It's happened. There's definitely court cases, yeah. And what the court will look at is well, did the strata do what was reasonable at the time? So we always operate under this umbrella of reasonableness. So it's not did one person, but did this group of people act reasonably? And there's always a consideration of what was going on at the time, what did the budget look like? Yeah. If there was, let's say, a leaking roof, did they do any repairs? Maybe there was nothing in the budget to do a full uh replacement, but did they at least do targeted repairs, right? What was reasonable in those circumstances? There's this idea of um repairs being good, better, best, and strata corporations have the ability to decide on any um part of that scale, good, better, best. It doesn't have to be the best repair replacement. Right. Um, but you know, uh I in my experience I have seen owners come and say, you failed to repair and maintain for this many years, and therefore now I have to pay a major special levy, so I want to hold you responsible. There's no case law that's actually held a council member responsible in that way in British Columbia.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

It has not been.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Has not been. So the Strata Property Act, on that note about uh personal responsibility, the Strata Property Act has some sections that require council members to act uh with respect to a duty of good faith to the best interest of the strata corporation and honestly. Right. And so typically if there is some failure or some direction, from what I've seen, owners or council members or anybody leading these projects is not acting in bad faith. They truly believe what they're doing is the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

So bad faith would be like that it's some kind of like malignant move where they're just like it's just not something atrocious.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

It has to be egregious, right? And so the act has this protection that as long as you've acted in these ways, um, you're kind of protected. And the case laws actually shook out that any owner in the strata corporation can't sue you under that section. The only party or body that can sue an a strata council member who maybe didn't meet their duties is the strata corporation itself. So the council itself would have to choose to pursue maybe an ex-council member for what they ought to have done or what they did in a previous term, for example. Um, but that's how the the case law, the common law has played out on that. So there's quite a bit of protection, I'd say, to these volunteers.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

So there is a natural liability to be held on council then.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

There there is a liability, but there's quite a lot of protection. Right. I'd say. And and you have to think of that from the policy perspective, right? So if we're asking owners to volunteer on this committee and and have this democratic society directing how to repair and maintain your common assets, if there's liability, major liability attached to it, I ain't volunteering, right? Are you?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah, no, not the volunteer, yeah. It's no good deed goes unpunished.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Exactly. And so I think it it does well in this current model to know that there are these protections in the Act and the liability is quite uh restricted.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Right, okay. So um I mean Vancouver is specifically just because we're kind of in a rainforest here, I mean this the the attack on buildings from the environment is significant from the rain.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

The wear and tear, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

The wear and tear is like major, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Um and I'm just not sure where the sort of middle middle of the road higher end buildings, not super high end, like not the stuff down on the water here in Cole Harbor, but just go in everywhere. And you and and if you look at stratophies that are um in your opinion, what is what is a healthy strathy per square foot?

The Three-Quote Dance With Contractors

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So hard to say because buildings will have amenities. Okay. Uh so it depends on your operating budget, right? Um, some buildings will have a a concierge they pay for, and a building manager they pay for, and a pool that they're repairing and maintaining, and all of these things. So I I can never give you what is good for a stratophy. My opinion on the stratophy piece though is that oftentimes um I'll go to a general meeting, I'll chair a general meeting for a client, for example, and the biggest red writing on the front package, front page of their package is no stratophy increase this year.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Really? That's a good thing?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Right? We've got inflation, the cost of everything is going to be. Exactly, the cost of everything is going up. Do you think your landscaping contract from last year is gonna be consistent this year? It's it's definitely going up five to seven percent. So why are we celebrating um stratophes staying consistent when we know the cost of things are going up? And then the other side of that model is that now we have a big special levy or we had a deficit last year and people are still not happy. So I think the reality that many owners need to grapple with is that living in a strata doesn't mean it's cheaper because you don't have to do all this repair and maintenance out of your pocket. You're paying for it somehow. And either that's through strata fees or some special levy.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

And what about the the the cities obviously making stuff more expensive as well every year?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Your your water's going up, your utilities are going up. I mean everything. Everything's going up, right? And I think, I mean, I want to go back to your idea about wear and tear in BC. So I've had files where we have this beautiful thing called a depreciation report.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah, do you know the Eli report? Do you know those guys?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Uh no, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Yeah, that's pretty cool actually. I had them on the podcast probably 20, 20 podcasts ago. They did they have um uh uh an AI platform that analyzes your depreciation report.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

That would be gold for many, many councils.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yes, the ELI report, you should check it out. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

So you upload it and it gives you some practical spit-out information. So oftentimes I'll get a question, Catherine, we have a depreciation report, what should we do with it? Read it.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Read it, sit down, start at page one and end at page 35, you know, 305 or whatever, and read it. But like a platform like that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

It basically pulls it into chunks and what your liabilities are and all. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Council Liability And Protections

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Um because they're so dense, owners know they have to get them. It's now legislated that you have to get them, but nobody reads them, so they're not planning because they're not actually uh digesting all that information in there. Um, but I think what else is the reality is because of the climate we are in in British Columbia, your depreciation report from 2015 might say you have 25 years left on a certain common element. But the reality might be much different because of just what's happened in the environment. And so I've had clients or I've had owners try to oppose things saying, well, this can't be due yet. The depreciation report from 2015 said I had 20 years left on this element.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Sympathize with you, I totally understand, but unfortunately the reality can change very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah, and then it's yeah, it's especially with envelopes.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

That's envelopes are the biggest, these concrete buildings with this elasometric coating. Um, so you're getting the the you know, I I remember when I first started working in this area, yeah Catherine, we're gonna do a big painting project. And I'm like, painting? Why is it so expensive? No, we're not just painting the color of the building, we're painting on these protective coatings for these different kinds of uh building materials that are very important in terms of long-term longevity. Um and so you you've really got to learn living in these buildings, I think, as owners, what is on the outside? What do we have to repair and maintain? It's not a simple hardy board shingle house, right? No, it's not. It's a lot more complicated.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah, and also like this the seals as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Totally. Tot and like the balconies, right? So we've got balconies that are maybe wearing down, letting water seep in. There's just so many, so many sites for intrusion that those these these depreciation reports are what I often see with water is building envelope condition assessments. They're called beccas, uh, very helpful in terms of repair and maintenance. Even in the short term, what can we do now to give us just another 10 years before we have to consider a big repla repair and replacement? And only proactive councils are thinking of things like that. And and I don't fault councils at all, they have so much work to do with maybe quarterly meetings, maybe a meeting every two months. It depends on what their contract says. And then they've got to deal with a variety of things. So just repair and maintenance is just one of them, right? They got bylaw complaints, someone's upset that the dog is barking all night next door.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Parties.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Parties, noise. Someone took my parking spot, you know. Um, hey, why didn't you uh deal with uh pruning the hedges last month?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Yeah, there's tons.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

It's never ending.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

So what do you think about the um um when I'm I'm on our our uh strata meetings, people are phoning it in on Zoom. I mean it's there's no engagement. And do you think some of this has hurt us?

Fees, Inflation, And Bad Incentives

SPEAKER_00 19:46

I think that this so there is uh some provisions in the act that allow electronic meetings now. It's just it's codified now, and and also of course your council meetings, a lot of them are are electronic now. I I don't know if that's the biggest reason we don't see engagement, but I do know a lack of engagement is a huge issue. Um and what I try to advise my clients is you know, the more information you can give your owners, maybe they want to be engaged more. I think if if owners are thinking like everything's taken care of, it's fine. I don't need to worry about it. I mean I have have I've seen AGMs with 250 people and 40 stratilots might show up to the general meeting, 20 might show up to the general meeting, and then they're pissed off when they don't like what happens on the other side. Yeah, totally. Um so so I don't I don't know the the way to solve this conundrum, but we need more engagement. Um we need to find a way to get owners in there. Like I said, town hall meetings can be really good, not just that once-a-year general meeting where we give a yearly update. Can we invite people out more often? Yeah. Um and how do we do that? Like I like to think of my strata they're a community. This is a community you live in, a democratic little community. How can you actually be neighbors and work together and be engaged? And the sad reality is it's a really hard um goal to kind of meet.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah. Well, I don't think social media is help. People just want to be in their own.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

And and you know, like we just said, you're working more than ever, things are more expensive, childcare people have to go pick up their kids from school and do the thing that, you know, there's not a lot of time.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

No, the compression is getting pretty, pretty heavy.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

So what about the um one thing that I find is interesting is a developer who's had a some kind of a deal with the city.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

And then you have an inspector come by when you do a renovation and they're like, what is this?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Well, this isn't what the plans are. I'm like, well, realtors said this.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Someone else has said this.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

And um I mean, one of the main things I think are the big issue are Um what's the uh the the the ratio square footage per the density. No, there's a there's there's a ratio. Um what's it called again?

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Um it's m uh how much common space there is versus Oh you mean like um like unit entitlement of of each strata law?

SPEAKER_01 22:18

No, it's um it's uh oh god. Um anyway, it it'll come to me. Essentially you have a lot of older styles made indoor solariums that they considered actually like a balcony. Yeah. But yet it's inside.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

And then people get rid of them.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yep. Or people add them, so we have both.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Yeah, and then and then somebody sells something and then it goes to the next um the next buyer, the realtor doesn't really know that. And then suddenly a an inspector comes by on another renovation, they go, well, this thing's supposed to be here, go and put it back up.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Does that have that meaning?

Depreciation Reports And Reality Checks

SPEAKER_00 22:59

So I I've seen it in some unique circumstances. So let's say somebody um over the years has a previous owner at some point has enclosed now a solarium, and when the building says, Well, we're gonna do a building remediation project and we need to deal with this extra glass or this extra kind of enclosure, but it's not part of strata responsibility because you put it in without approval. So the there's this whole body of case law and disputes around what we call unauthorized alterations. Right. There are some creative ways, I think lawyers and property managers have tried to deal with it through what we call indemnity agreements. But the problem is that we don't have really good record keeping all the time in strata corporations with this turnover of council and potentially turnover of managers, and so those records easily get lost. Um, and so when it does come, you know, time to figure it out, there is the owner's word, the council's word, and then the city's drawings. And we've got to figure out uh working together, hopefully. The problem is when I see it, we're all in dispute, and the goal is here to work together. Um, can we get some approval for that space? Do we have can we get a variant so we can actually enclose that? But the biggest question is always who's gonna pay for it? Is it common property? Is it strat a lot? Um if you and this is another one, if you've enclosed a space that was supposed to be common property, well now your habitable space has gone up. So should your strata fees go up?

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

So many unanswered questions. And so it's so important for strata corporations to try to be really good with their record, if nothing else, try to keep those records so you can say what happened historically, because that's always the question.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Have you ever seen a situation where a strata sells off the common area of the whole building to a corporation in order to recoup and have a partnership financially?

SPEAKER_00 25:00

I've never seen that. And I don't think it's something of the future. I don't know if you can. I don't think you can sell it. I think you can lease it because the common property is owned by all owners in joint tenancy. Right. Um, and so I don't think it's a piece of property, it's not a it's not fee simple in the way that it could be sold. I see. Uh however, we have arrangements, I guess I should backtrack, we have arrangements where uh developers will build these non well actually these arm's length corporations to lease out parking spaces, for example. Okay. And that's very common in Vancouver. And so you as an owner, you actually have a lease of a parking space from the developer, but then it's common property still, and so there's all these questions about.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

So it's not actually your parking space?

SPEAKER_00 25:46

I would say 90% of people's parking spaces and condos, maybe 95, 99% are not their parking spaces. Really? Yeah. They're not part of your strata lot, they're typically common property. Subject to a lease or some other arrangement. But if you look at a strata plan, your strata lot is what isn't within your four walls. Your balconies are not part of your strata lot either. They're typically common property for the most part. Right. Um, I think you know, townhouses of course are gonna be different. You typically you'll have to look at the plan again. But some garages are common property and some garages are part of the strata lot. And it's always important because whose responsibility is it to repair and maintain that? What can I do with it? What do the bylaws say? So I always, when I get a new file, send me the strata plan, send me the bylaws, let's see what is this thing, what's the designation. Just really quickly back to the unauthorized unauthorized alteration point. I'm doing a talk today at one o'clock uh up in um at BuildX here for a legal update on Strata. And one of the cases I'm going to talk about is where the original developer plans uh noted as a one-bedroom unit, but it was sold as a three-bedroom unit.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

So they had five people living there, and the occupancy bylaws said you can only have two people in a one-bedroom unit as designated by the developer.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Oh, yeah, no, you see, you're seeing this all over the place just because of this density problem.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Huge dispute, right? And there's a case, and I can talk about it later, but just an example of clearly there's been these alterations over the years. No one's really clued into them until the problem got really big.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Yeah. Shh, amazing, yeah. Yeah, it's uh we're in for an interesting ride with uh with these stratas, and especially can be related to construction. There's so much work to be done.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

And I don't know where the money's gonna come from on a lot of this. It's just there's just too much to be done and not enough cash.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

It it's it's quite concerning, right? And and um, especially with with aging buildings, so you're getting buildings that are 30 or 40 years old, they've got major repair and maintenance projects. Even 20, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'd say 10 years ago the strata windup concept was really hot, but because of the prices of things and developers are being a little more conservative.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

That was a strata windup, wasn't it?

Envelopes, Coatings, And Water Intrusion

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Strata windup is where you essentially wind up your strata corporations. So there's a few ways it can be done, but in my experience, the most common way is a developer approaches a parcel of land. Maybe they see three floors of strata units and say, hey, I think I can get 15 floor density here, so I'm gonna offer you X amount of money to basically wind up your strata plan and sell it to me.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

And I'm gonna redevelop the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Okay, no, I know I don't know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Yeah, but uh you know, in 20 between I'd say 2018 and 2022, they were hot. There was a lot going on in the city, as you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Yeah, because there's a lift to be made.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

But now developers are conservative, they're quiet, they're not approaching strata corporations, and what I'm seeing is councils are coming to me saying, hey, we had a developer interested in 2021. Nothing happened. We're waiting for someone else to come down the road and knock on our door, but the elevator needs now a$300,000 uh replacement elevator modernization project. Do we have to do it? The answer is usually yes. Your repair and maintenance obligations don't stop because you think someone's gonna come by your your your uh your plan, right? Your property. So it's it's it's a bigger problem for the buildings that we're looking at at those kinds of arrangements early on.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, now they're dead.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Sadly.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Okay, well this has been awesome, uh Catherine. Um so yeah, in order to get uh new uh customers, new clients, um clients, sorry, legal profession. Um how do people get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Uh you can reach me. My name's Catherine Upple again. Uh email's the best way to call me. Google my name and you'll see my profile on uh on my on our website. And I'm on LinkedIn and uh typically act for Strata Corporations, but we also will consult with you know some owners in buildings that might have a bone to pick. Um we're here for them too. So yeah, happy to always chat anything strata.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Very, very, very cool. Anyway, this was great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Thanks, James. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Okay, you're welcome. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at SiteMaxSystems.com slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips, and everything you need to know about the Site Visit Podcast and Site Visit, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. SiteMax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building the first time.