SEAS 7 EP 328 : When Strata Meets Pizza!! with James Minchau

James Minchau joins Curtis Pope to break down the basics of strata properties—by comparing them to pizza! A fun and simple way to clear up what strata living really means.

James Minchau
Personal Real Estate Corporation
Realtor®
RE/MAX Magnolia
Phone:  604-300-6497
Email: jamesminchau@gmail.com

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✅ Instagram: @jamesminchau
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Transcript

0:01

Flower Power. It's Saturday morning, time for another edition of the REMAX Magnolia real estate show with myself. Curtis Pope and he's back again. James Michele is here. Hey everybody. What's happening? Well, it's good to have you back. Oh, thank you. It's so good to be back after so long. It's been a couple weeks, at least. It just seems to be when there's a spot to fill, they send you. Yeah, I mean, you know somebody like, like, falls down or something there. Oh, James will change will come. It's just, I have a lot of talk about, I'm, I got a big mouth. That's okay, that's that's mostly what it's all about. So when Michele's too busy and everything else is like, send James, send me. I mean, hey, the I Am your default realtor. Hey, that's my new tagline, the default realtor. Default realtor. It's James, your default realtor. Folks, hey, maybe that, maybe there's something to that. Just, you know, yeah, you fall back to the default. Remember my Realtors name? Who should we get? Just get the default. See that inside of your car. Maybe I'll be, maybe they'll think I'm the band default. Then you might get a cease and desist from Dallas Smith. I probably will, yeah, because they do still play some shows now and then. True. I know him, though. So okay, well, you're okay. Then I might call and think on you to Dallas. If you do that, don't do that, dude. You see this guy. See what he's doing, default. He's using your same logo. Oh, man, I'd be good. That might be going a little too far, using their logo. Yeah, I'd be cranking their their music from in inside the the car. Okay, well, then maybe that would work out, but my big face would still be on the side of the car. Can't miss your car. You can't miss my car. Neither could the guy that ran the back you a while ago. Oh, on the motorbike. Yeah, I got hit by a motorbike on the day I was going for my motorcycle license. It's true, but these things only happen to you. No, it's true. So, hey, I'm kind of hungry, little early, but I guess, you know, might need breakfast. Yeah, no, but, but you know what, thinking of having a breakfast pizza? A breakfast pizza, wouldn't that be good? You have some like Hollandaise as the sauce, some egg and some hash browns, some bacon on top cheese. Of course, I think you need Canadian bacon for that. Oh yeah, absolutely sausage. Some breakfast sausage. You might be onto something. I've never had one, but maybe we could make a nice breakfast pizza. I'm in and I only say this because this week's episode if, I mean, we don't have to get to the episode, but we can just talk about this recipe we're putting together for breakfast pizza. That's right. I think people have already started pulling out their their grandmother's little cards from the little box. Gotta write this one down. But anyway, it's recently we had an issue where, where my my clients, were looking on one of the very famous Realtors sites on the Internet, and they didn't want to pick certain homes because it said strata. And they said, well, we don't own our home then. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's it's still freehold. They said is, we can either pick from freehold houses or strata houses. And I'm like, no, no, strata is still freehold. So, and they were confused, because they've been looking at this, this very famous website, for a long time, and they could only pick between strata or freehold. But the truth of the matter is, strata usually is still freehold. So in the MLS, it's either freehold strata or freehold non strata. There's lots of other, you know, titles, you know, your ownership of your land, yeah, yeah, lease and all this stuff, but, but generally, we have either freehold strata or freehold non strata. So if you are on that very, very famous internet site that you go to find properties, just know that strata actually does mean freehold strata. And that got me thinking, let's explain to the folks. There's a lot of people are so confused about strata. I have some people who think that strata you only own inside your property and you don't own anything else. A lot of people think you don't own it at all, and you're just paying this money to some faceless person who's using it to go to Aruba. There's a lot of people who just think strata is just a horrible concept, but it's actually not, and I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna try to sort of navigate for everybody. Well, I can honestly say that strata scares the heck out of me whenever I see that, because I I know that I've had some horror stories of friends, and here's like that over the years. And also some strata councils can be all kinds of fun, but. I some of them are great, but some of them are not so great. So I've always just kind of, I see strata and that's been, always been pretty much a Nope. It's pretty much an automatic, you know, tune out. For me, I'm like, nope, looking, yeah, I mean, some, some, some stratus, you know, can have, it depends on who, who's on the strata Council, right? If you're on the strata Council. Well, you can have a say on all sorts of stuff, but you have a say anyway, because there is a vote on almost everything. So let's, let's get into it, and maybe I can explain even to you, and just make it sort of clear even to you. I think I need some clarification, because I've just always kind of run the opposite direction. Whenever I've seen a listing, it says strata. So that's true. Well, since, since I want to, I want pizza so bad. I'm so hungry, I'm I thought, maybe we can, we can compare strata to pizza. That's going to be our metaphor. Strata is like pizza. Strata is like pizza. So freehold, non strata. This is the neighborhoods of the world where you own your house, and you have a fence, and you have your yard, and you have your house, and it belongs to you, and every single piece belongs to you, and the bank and you. So you own it completely. You own the house. You own the lands. This is like when you order a pizza to your house and only you are home. So this is like a sad existence for some of us. Sounds like a pretty good night to me. I know, right. It's true. A pretty good night where you just have the pizza all to yourself. You can tell that we are dads. It's true, yes, oh boy, but you get to own the land. I'm sorry, you own the box. Sorry, we're talking about pizza. Yeah, you own the box. You can eat the pizza any way you want. You can pick any of the slices you want next. You can have all the dips you get, the little paper underneath the pizza that soaks up the the grease you get to do whatever you want with the box, and life is grand, right? Total independence, just like freehold strata or freehold non strata, you are only owning the driveway. You own the rocks, the little lights, every blade of grass you own, the drain tile, you own everything. You even own a reasonable amount of space above your house, the airspace above your house too, believe it or not. And I say reasonable amount because planes have to fly over it without asking you, because that would get really annoying. Yeah, if you had to ask everyone you flew over to get your house high enough that you have to put a red light in the top, that's that's impressive. That is impressive. I think I'm gonna do that soon. Just keep building up, whereas freehold strata. Now, have you ever bought pizza with a bunch of bodies for, you know, watching the game something, there are rules to when you order pizza with a with friends, right? Absolutely. And you know, what are some of the rules may maybe on there. They're unwritten, unspoken. That's right. Well, in starters, it's, you know, it's, one piece at a time, and you don't, you know, you know, you don't grab like, four pieces, or something like that, or and you don't grab like in between the pieces you the first person to pull gets, gets, that's right. And then, then you don't get to just pull from the other side the biggest piece. Well, there's always not one jerk that reaches for the biggest piece. Yeah. But they get, they get, they get called out. They do. They get older pretty quick. Single time. That's like freehold strata so, so you all you get to eat your piece of pizza. You don't have to share your piece with your buddy. That's just weird. So the pizza, the actual food you're consuming is your strata unit. That's once you open the door and close it, you're stepping on your own land. You're stepping on your own stuff that belongs to you because you've paid it off. But the thing is, is the box that the pizza is in that belongs to everyone, because you all pitched in six bucks for the for the the actual pie to come, right? So the the driver who brought it there, you all paid, paid him together, the box that all belongs to to you guys together, even that little sheet of paper that soaks up the grease that all belongs to you guys together, that does not belong to the pizza guy anymore, that doesn't belong to the pizza delivery guy. Those people are all contractors that you pay. Even the guy who baked your pizza bought the box in the first place, put it together, put the pie in the box. That was a contractor. You all as owners of the pizza. You all paid him to do that, that as soon as it transfers to you that becomes yours. So in a freehold strata, you guys are owning every lamp post. You guys own all the pavement on the on the common roads. If it's a condo, well, then you own the parking garage. You even own that, that mechanical room and that elevate. Your room. You're not allowed to go in, but you own it. You own it fair and square, just like a freehold non strata owns their own bathroom. They can go anywhere they want. In freehold strata, there are some rules, though, right? I mean, you, you, you know it, and I know and this is the reason why some people don't like the strata is because there are rules, but there should be rules for yourself in non, non strata as well. Like, if you're if you just own your own house, you should have a rule, you know, like, don't, don't always take your shoes off before walking all over the carpets. Some people don't have these rules or or we have to change the roof every 25 years. That should be a rule for your house as well, and some people stretch that, but in Freehold strata, where you are all owning this stuff together, you'd literally have to, you have to share the land. You know, if there's a gate, you're sharing that gate. So this is why, living there, a lot of people say, Oh, stratus, bad, but, but, you know, you have a strata maintenance fee and, and these can be small, or they can be be large, but there's a reason for that, that strata maintenance fee, and that is because we have to save up for eventualities. What? Like a like a roof for a water mains, right? Yeah. We had some friends who had their envelope of their townhouse need all the need replaced, wow. And their contingency didn't cover it, so they all had to find a whole lot of money, yes, to get it covered. Yeah. Whereas another friend who he paid a really high strata rate. And I said that's really high. And he's like, Well, he goes, they have a huge contingency. I look at his insurance, and I'm not going to get dinged for 10k because the roof needs done. Yeah, yeah. Or, or more like, I've seen hundreds of 1000s of dollars for water mains or something like, like this. And for those of you who don't know what a contingency is, maybe you've you've never lived in a strata contingency is where all of the homeowners who own all of the land, they all agree that they're going to put a whole bunch of money in the bank for when something bad happens. I mean, not bad, but just something happens. Like everybody knows they have to replace their roof if they own a building and so that roofs going, it's going to happen. Or if you have an elevator, you're going to have to replace the mechanics of the elevator. You're going to have to replace a boiler in your your home. And since you and 250 other people own this giant building together, you're going to have to do it. And so they they add money to the maintenance fee. So the maintenance fee is not just for cutting the shrubs or keeping the building clean. This is also for, as you said, you know, these eventualities, for when the water main needs to be replaced, and there's $250,000 or the entire building envelope like that means siding. That means, you know, they have to replace the entire rain screen. That's a that's a big, big thing. And if you don't have money in a contingency fund, then that has to come out of all the owners pockets. And so they say, oh, it's time for you to pay up. You know, every all these 250 people need to, need to pay five versus $7,000 to fill the contingency so that we can pay for this roof or this envelope, then we have to, you know that then and you don't have the contingency fund for it, it comes out of your pocket, then you have to get a mortgage or a loan of some kind if you don't have the money on you. And this is why some people don't like strata, but strata is just forcing you to maintain your property so that it can continue to gain equity. So it's not this evil person taking your money and spending it on whatever they want, or you know you're you're paying a strata manager sometimes to manage your strata. Sometimes you're paying for a maintenance person to come and trim all the shrubs in the grass, because that stuff you don't want to do. That's the whole reason you went to strata in the first place. Right, right, yeah. But stratas are freehold. Stratas are definitely freehold. Most of them are, I should say most BC stratas are freehold strata you own your unit. You own it. You can do whatever you want inside there, paint it, whatever color inside, do what, do what you want in. Inside there, there's very few rules for what happens in your home. Some are no no smoking so you know, if you live in a condo and it's a no smoking condo, that's all of the owners say I want to. I don't want smoke all over my building, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, we thought we should probably take a quick break. Yeah, I need another slice of that breakfast pizza, and we'll continue on more about Stratus here in just a couple moments. If people want more information about REMAX Magnolia, where can they go? Yeah? Is, this is a good one. It's a REMAX Magnolia, realty.com and we're back with more right after this. You Flower Power flowers and we are back with segment two of the REMAX Magnolia real estate Show with James Michele and myself Curtis Pope, and we've been talking about, we, you know, we had to start the show with breakfast pizza. Now that's all the two of us can think about. Oh, I want one so bad. And you even found a recipe when we're on break that quick. You googled it and you found one? Yeah, no, I used to. I used the AI, oh, the AI, told it what I wanted, and it made me an entire recipe for the breakfast pizza. So maybe I'll post that on my website. James minchow.com, there we go. Plan. You guys can go there in a in a day or so and and make one yourself. I like the sound of that. Now, we were talking about strata and but one thing I'm like in the back of my mind just popped into my head because we went to break was now there is, of course, the difference between say strata and say a co op. Now, yes, Co Op is totally different. That's that's a whole different show, but I can briefly explain the because a co op, you don't own your place, right? Say you're owning a percentage of the whole thing. Own a share, so you're a shareholder in the entire so there's a, there's a, I mean, just like if you own shares in Microsoft, you own a little piece of Microsoft, but, you know, you could have non voting shares and, but, yeah, you, you literally have to put in a whole bunch of money into the into shares to to own, to own the shares in the property that is is owned by a a sort of a trust company or, right, you know, a co op, actually. So, yeah, that's, that's a whole, that's a whole different thing. And so you can often find, wow, this, um, it happens in mobile homes a lot where you, you're like, Wow, this mobile home is like, $100,000 less than than the rest of them, um, and then you read at the bottom, oh, you need, you know, $15,000 for your your shares to put, put anything. Okay, now I understand, Yeah, cuz I know, I think sometimes people do get those confused when they think, Oh, I don't own anything. Well, no, you own that. When the strata you do own, yeah? You, you only the the equity is growing, yeah? And as you, as you maintain your property properly, you, your equity goes, goes up. And that's the same as if you as a freehold, non straddle, like your your regular neighborhood. But did you know there's another strata, and this is kind of combines the best. The best combination of both worlds is called bear land strata. And a bear land strata is kind of like going out for pizza. So you and your buddy, instead of ordering a pizza in you guys decide that the game sucks, that your team is losing so bad. Let's go to the local pizza joint and grab a couple of couple of pizzas and a beverage. You sit down at your table and you order your personal size pizza. It comes on its own plate, but you know, you guys shared the the car going there and or the, say, the cab, like the cab fare going there. You guys are sharing the the wait staff. So you know you're gonna pay the wait staff, the their, their tip. You're all sharing that together, because you're just splitting the bill. But you get your own pizza. You eat it however you want. You get your own plate. You can make it as messy as you want and put all the spices and stuff right on the whole pizza that you like your dipping sauces or your dipping sauces. Everything is yours, except you're just hanging out at a restaurant with other people. There are still a couple of of rules for the restaurant, but you can, kind of you do what you want with your own pizza. And that's what bear land strata is like. So you own your land. You own your home, so all the siding is yours, like in a in a regular strata, your balcony actually isn't yours. It's called limited common property, and I'll talk about that afterwards. But there's no there's really almost no limited common property to a bear land strata. You own your home, you own all the land, and sometimes a lot of times, bear land stratas are even acreages. You can even have an acreage in a bear land strata. So why would you want a strata? Or why would you need a strata when you have this bear land. Strata because there's not a lot of rules. There's the amount of rules for for the and bylaws for barely strata are normally very small. You're normally there's not all these things where you have to have your your house a certain color, you have to have your grass a certain length, you can do what you want. It's your home. But this is where we get into things like gated communities, and this happens a lot, let's say in like Orange County, where every community in Orange County seems to be a gated community, right? So what happens generally? And it's not always the case, but generally, the developer goes to the city and says, I want to build this new development. And the city goes, Yeah, but we don't want to bring all the services in. They said, don't, don't, don't worry, we will do that. They said, Okay, it has to be stratified. Then stratified means everybody pays it together. So the developer builds their own water line, their own electricity, builds a gate, builds fences, builds security systems, street lamps, all the things that the city normally would put in if they gave it their stamp of approval. But now the developer said, I'm going to pay for it myself, and everybody's going to pay for all that, for the maintenance of that. So you own your one acre of land. Let's say you own your 3500 square foot home. You own the grass, you own the driveway, you own the mailbox. Everything is yours, but you share the road coming up to it. You share the gate. You share the security cameras, you share the system that opens the gate. You maybe sometimes there's there's generators for the whole community. Sometimes there's things like this, but there's no rules on how you should paint your house, how to keep your land, how clean your your walkway has to be, but yet they still provide services such as snow clearing, you know, water maintenance, this, this kind of thing. So this is the best of both worlds, where somebody else is taking care of your your gates, your gates, and your security systems, but you get to just do what you want on on your own land, and that, again, is like eating your own pizza on the table. The table belongs to the the well, you're renting the table for the time that you're eating, but you all are there at the table. So it's all all of you are paying for the table. You're all paying the wait staff. You're eating your own pizza. Does that make sense? Yeah, I follow you, yeah? So that's, that's bear land strata. It's sort of the, the best of of both worlds. Yeah. And again, when you see a gated community of houses, it's almost always going to be a bear land strata. And again, acreages are the same as well. Now, limited common property. This is something that a lot of people don't quite understand, even people who are living in stratas, unless you are pouring over the strata documents, which most people don't, don't realize that there are parts of the unit that you seem to own in but in fact, doesn't belong to you. Let's say your balcony, this is a really common one. So let's say you're living in a townhouse and you have this really nice balcony. Sometimes, most times, that balcony actually belongs to everyone, but only you get to use it. So you know, technically there, there, it's shared space, just like the siding of the of of the entire townhome community, right? Is all, all belongs to the community. The grass all belongs to the community. Yet, that little patch of yard that you have behind your townhouse that is still that, that's, that's limited, common property that you get exclusive use of it, but it belongs to everyone. Somebody else mows it. This is also saying things like parking spaces that they belong to, they belong to everyone, but you get to use it. Your your driveway belongs to everyone. You get to use it. And so this in, in the in our pizza reference, this is like when you're ordering pizza in and you're you're back at home watching the game, your your your team's finally winning. You run back home with your pizza. You've got your pizza box, you've ordered the pizza. Everybody ordered their own dip. And so, you know, you like the ranch dip, right? You want to kind of keep that for yourself, because everyone ordered the cheese or the cheese or the Marin marinara, but y'all kind of trade, trade off a little bit as long as you're not, you know, double dipping. But generally, the dip that you bought is, is yours, but you don't. You quite often have it in front of you, but somebody else might, might dip in, into your dip. But, and that's limited, common property is, is that, you know, you're, you're the only one who gets to use it, but you all bought it together. It came with the price of the of the pizza, right, right, yeah. So that's, that's, that's, you know, the the strata, p. The thing. Now, why does this matter? Not all strata homes are the same, right? They all have different stuff. So when you're when you're on those internet sites that show you all the homes, and you just see the word strata, don't right away. Get you know, don't right away. Throw that one away. Look at the home. Say, so don't be like me. Don't be don't be like Curtis, folks. I mean, be like Curtis, with the with the unusually sexy voice. That's just weird. Nobody's ever described my voice like that. But be like, don't be like Curtis, where you see the word strata and run, because I'm getting better now. Now I've heard you tell me about it. So now I'm feeling more confident that I look at Strata listings, especially when you're looking at at at detached homes, like if you're looking at detached homes and you go to that, that that most famous Canadian real estate site that shows you all the homes, ReMax magnoliarealty.com REMAX magnoliarealty.com actually doesn't do this, but one of the very major ones, I think I know the one you're talking about. Yes, you do. I'm not calling them out, but you kind of are, well, you'll, you'll figure yourself one plus something equals two, is what I'm saying here, right? You have to think about that. Matt's not my strong point. It's okay. It's okay. You have to be bad at something, a lot of things. But if you go on there and you're looking for deep detached homes, and you see in most of the detached homes all say freehold, freehold, freehold, and you come across one that just says strata, which tells you it's not which includes the fact that it's not freehold. So you're like, Oh, well, I kind of want to own my home. Take a step back, stop for a second and really look it. What is this actually? So I'm trying to get them to actually change it to freehold strata, because that's what it actually is. So there are bear land stratas and there's, there's, there's a lots of good ones, especially like North North River, there's, there's lots of really good bear land stratas out there. And these are gated communities that have security systems. The traffic is calmed because of that. So you're not just going to get look looky loos driving around very, very nice places to live, if you like security, if you like peace. And so these are bear land stratas, and they will always come up on that major site as strata and not freehold. But yet it is freehold. You literally own it yourself. You're not renting it as opposed to leasehold, right? So, so really take a look at that. And that's that's why this, this matters, because bear land stratas are a a very great way of owning a home and getting what you want. And then when you're looking at at stratus, find out, find out what the strata fees cover, because sometimes they don't cover maintenance. And you, you know, you're you, you know, if this is just a regular strata, not a bear land strata, you know, maybe they are asking you to maintain your yard. Well, the reason you wanted a straddle out in the first place is because you didn't want to do yard, yard work. And so make sure you know those, those what the strata fees cover. And then make sure you know the the bylaws. I mean, pets are a big one. Pets are that's usually the first thing that people ask me when I have a straddle out for sale is what size of pets, or are pets? Okay? Because there's so many different rules on pets, and it's not some evil genius making these rules, it's all of the owners making it together, like if all the owners decided that everyone has to have a pet. Well, not that they would, but, you know, then, then you have to have a pet. But these, they're doing it because it's like minded people moving into like minded places. If you're, if you're the round peg, and you're trying to get into a stress strata, that's clearly a square hole, um, you'd probably, you know, you might like the look of the house, but you might not like the community. The community might be really, you know, really bad for you, if you're this, you know, round hole fitting into the square peg. So try to find a place that, oh no smoking, no pets. Oh well, you know, I'll try to, you know, sneak in there, and then you'll realize you're having a terrible time trying to, you're walking, you know, three blocks to try to have us have a smoke. And you're, you're hiding your your pet everywhere, and you're, you're driving it off. A lot always go with a strata that fits your lifestyle, not just what looks nice, not just what looks good like on the on the MLS. You're really, really, really trying to to fit your lifestyle in with the lifestyle of. Others. And there's all sorts of different lifestyles for different ones. There's, there's, like, full smoking, no pet restriction, there's, you know, there's definitely lots of lifestyle options out there for everyone. If that makes sense, makes sense to me, and I also make sense. I guess we're getting low on time. Here's one I can talk for two episodes about this. Apparently we do need to do a follow up. We're gonna have to do a follow up. If you have any questions, just email me at James michele@remax.ca and I would love to, I would love to answer that and maybe fit it into a second episode. Although that being said, I'm sure you must have a listing or two. Oh, I do pick me. You know this here is a bear land strata. This bear land strata is in mission. And what you get at this bear land strata is a beautiful gated community of of single family homes on land. So this is a small acreage. It's three quarters of an acre of beautifully treed yard with like it has like an archery range and fire pits and hot tubs. And it has like a barbecue house, like a little picnic barbecue house, all lit up, gorgeous, gorgeous place. It's a 3500 square feet somewhere, somewhere around there, three, three quarters of an acre of land. It's got all the modern finishings, beautiful, modern West Coast home built in 2016 it's got, you know, that gray and cedar look. It's all Hardy board and and cedar on the the outside. Beautiful, beautiful place to live, so calm, so relaxing, gorgeous views of the Fraser River and the whole valley. And this is at 34651, Gordon place in mission, in the hatch bench area, actually. And that is going for 1,416,000 get you to this place to see it. I'll meet you there too. I love showing this home. I love getting you through the gate and you're like, Wow, this feels like a real, actual community. Come on out. I'd love to see you. All right, so I guess that means we're done for a day. Or I can't believe it so fast, so now I can go home and make make pizza. You can make breakfast, breakfast pizza. All right, if people want more information about your listings and what else you have going on at REMAX magnolia. Where can folks go? They can go to REMAX magnoliarealty.com and join us again next week, when we will talk real estate in order to unlock your real estate potential on a show where real estate is maximized. Thanks for listening. You.