How to Use Your Strata's Depreciation Report | BC Guide
Your strata almost certainly has a depreciation report. Since July 1, 2024, every BC strata corporation with five or more lots has been required to obtain one on a five-year cycle, and the old option to defer it by a 3/4 vote at each AGM is gone. Stratas in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and most of the Capital Regional District needed a current report by July 1, 2026. The rest of BC has until July 1, 2027.
It cost somewhere between $5,000 and $30,000 depending on the building. A qualified professional walked the property, inventoried every major component, and projected repair and replacement costs across a 30-year horizon.
And then, in most stratas, it was presented briefly at an AGM and filed.
There's a real distinction between having a depreciation report and using it as a planning tool, and most of the value sits on the second side of that line. This post is about how to get there.
First, why it matters: how small repairs become big bills
Here's a composite story, but a familiar one to anyone who's sat on a council.
The sealant around a set of windows on the north face starts to crack. A contractor doing other work mentions it in passing — worth redoing, a few hundred dollars. It doesn't make the agenda. There's a lot on the agenda.
Two winters later there's a stain on a ceiling in the unit below. A restoration company opens the wall and finds what water has been doing quietly for two years: saturated sheathing, rot in the framing, insulation that has to come out. A few hundred dollars of sealant has become a five-figure repair — and if water tracked along the wall assembly, the number climbs from there. The conversation at the next AGM stops being about maintenance and starts being about a special levy.
Nobody made a bad decision. That's what makes it worth writing about.
Why strata councils defer maintenance
Deferral is rarely a conscious choice. It's what happens when a few ordinary pressures line up.
Budget pressure. Fees are already rising — since November 2023, stratas have been required to put at least 10% of their operating budget into the contingency reserve fund each year. Adding a discretionary repair means asking owners for more money for something that isn't visibly broken yet.
Uncertainty. Is cracked sealant urgent, or a five-year problem? Nobody on council is a building envelope specialist. Absent a clear answer, "let's watch it" feels like the responsible middle path. It usually isn't.
The one-year term. The council that defers a $300 repair really does avoid a hard conversation this year. The bill lands on a council three or four years out, made up of people who weren't in the room. Almost nobody thinks in those terms — but the incentive quietly rewards waiting.
The reactive trap. This is the one that's hardest to escape. Some stratas have done band-aid repairs for so long, and built up so little contingency, that they can only fund genuinely urgent work. Once you're purely reactive, every dollar is already spoken for, and there's no room left to get ahead of anything. Buildings that stayed on top of maintenance and put money aside are ready to go when a component nears end of life. Buildings that didn't are permanently fighting the last fire.
How thin records make deferral compound
When that ceiling stain appears, the useful questions are: Has this happened before? Did anyone flag this area? When was the sealant last done, and by whom?
If the answers exist only in a four-year-old invoice and the memory of an owner who has since moved, the council is deciding blind. They can't tell a one-off from a pattern, or whether they're paying to fix something for the second time. And the original observation — a contractor mentioned the sealant was worth redoing — was never written down, so it can't inform anything.
That's the compounding mechanism. It isn't only that the repair got more expensive with time. It's that each council starts from a blank page, so the same issue can be noticed, set aside, and forgotten several times before it becomes unavoidable.
(More on why building knowledge disappears at turnover: What Happens When Your Strata Council Turns Over Every Year)
What a depreciation report is — and what it isn't
A depreciation report is a professional inventory of every major component your strata is responsible for — roof, envelope, elevator, plumbing, parkade membrane, boiler — with estimated remaining life and projected repair or replacement cost over 30 years.
It's the document that should have caught the sealant. But it's worth being precise about what it actually claims to be, because councils get this wrong in both directions.
A depreciation report is a guide, not a schedule you're obligated to follow. The dates in it are based on typical service life, not on an inspection of the actual condition of your components this year. Something listed as due in 2029 might genuinely need doing in 2027, or might have five good years left. The report tells you roughly when to start paying attention — it doesn't tell you what to do, and it doesn't replace getting a proper condition assessment when an item comes up.
So councils that treat the report as a rigid schedule end up spending money early on components that were fine. Councils that treat it as irrelevant because "it's just an estimate" end up with items flagged fifteen years ago and never addressed. The useful posture is in between: the report sets your planning horizon, and your own research determines the actual timing.
Which means the report needs to be something you return to and update against reality — repeatedly, over years. And that's exactly where the format fails you.
Why the report gets filed and forgotten
It's a hundred-plus pages of tables, component inventories, and funding scenarios, living as a PDF on the management portal, or attached to an old email, or on someone's laptop. When a question comes up two years later, answering it means scrolling through dozens of pages hunting for the one line about window sealants. So mostly nobody does.
There's a deeper problem underneath the format, though: most stratas have no routine that forces the report back onto the table. No standing agenda item, no annual review, no trigger. And if nothing triggers a review, the report just quietly ages until the next one is due — at which point you pay for a fresh one and start the cycle again.
That's not a council failing. It's a missing process. Nobody was ever handed one.
The voting rule that makes reading it worth real money
Here's the provision most councils don't know about, and it's the reason this isn't just a filing-habits problem.
Under section 96 of the Strata Property Act, spending from the contingency reserve fund normally requires a 3/4 vote at a general meeting. But if the expenditure is for repair, maintenance, or replacement recommended in your most current depreciation report, it needs only a majority vote.
That's a significant difference. The same repair, from the same account, faces a far easier approval threshold if it's in the report. A 3/4 vote is where contentious projects go to die at an AGM. A majority vote is achievable.
So a council that knows its depreciation report can bring planned work forward on the easier threshold, at the right time, before it compounds. A council that has never really read it ends up funding the same work later as an emergency or a special levy — having given away an advantage the Act handed them for free.
The report didn't fail. It just never got opened.
One more use: fewer votes to fight
There's a procedural benefit to knowing what's in your report that's easy to miss.
Some councils commit, at budget time, to funding the routine work their report recommends through strata fees — reserving special levies for the genuinely large items like elevator replacement or envelope work. The payoff isn't just financial. Because that work is already funded and already recommended in the report, you stop needing a separate approval vote and a separate levy fight for each individual item. The hard conversation happens once a year instead of every time something needs doing.
Either way, the prerequisite is the same: somebody has to know what the report actually recommends, in enough detail to put it in a budget.
What this means if you're an owner, not on council
You don't need to be on council to use any of this. Under section 36 of the Strata Property Act, owners have the right to request and inspect strata records, including the depreciation report. Four questions worth asking at your next AGM:
- What does our depreciation report say is coming due in the next five years?
- Is our contingency reserve fund on track to cover it, or are we heading for a special levy?
- Which recommended items have we actually scheduled — and which have been carried over from the last report?
- When did council last review the report, and is that review a standing part of the budget process?
If nobody can answer, that's not an accusation — it's the normal state of affairs. It's also exactly the gap worth closing before it turns into a bill.
Turning the report into a plan
The problem isn't the depreciation report. It's that a 130-page PDF is a terrible format for something you need to act on over five years, across five different councils.
And there's a fairness point here too. Most people join a strata council because they care about where they live, not because they want to become capital planners. You can't realistically train volunteers into capital planning professionals, and a process that only works when the right expert happens to be on council isn't a process — it's luck. Whatever system you use has to be simple enough that an ordinary owner can keep it running.
Pleno takes the report you already paid for and turns it into something workable. You upload it, and it's broken down automatically into clear, interactive sections instead of a wall of pages:
- Time-sensitive items — what's coming due, and how much useful life a component has left before its next repair or replacement.
- Outstanding items — the running list of everything the report says needs attention, browsable rather than buried.
Then it becomes actionable. Council can pull specific items straight out of the report into their own planner — move something into a to-do state, assign it, mark it complete when the work is done. The report stops being a static document and becomes the backbone of a maintenance plan that carries forward to the next council instead of returning to the folder.
One more reason to build the habit now: if you're in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, or the CRD, you also need an electrical planning report by December 31, 2026 — a separate requirement covering your building's electrical capacity for EV charging and heat pumps. That's a second major report arriving within months. It'll be worth more than the PDF it's printed on only if someone can find what's in it.
The cracked sealant is in your depreciation report. So is the roof, the boiler, the parkade membrane, and the thing that becomes a special levy in 2031 if nobody looks. The report already knows. The question is whether anyone reads it in time.
Frequently asked questions
Is a depreciation report mandatory in BC? Yes. Since July 1, 2024, all strata corporations with five or more strata lots must obtain a depreciation report on a five-year cycle. Stratas with four or fewer lots remain exempt. The previous option to defer by an annual 3/4 vote has been removed entirely.
When is the BC depreciation report deadline? Stratas without a report, or whose most recent report predates December 31, 2020, needed one by July 1, 2026 in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and most of the Capital Regional District. Elsewhere in BC the deadline is July 1, 2027. Reports must then be updated every five years.
Does a strata have to follow the timeline in its depreciation report? No. A depreciation report is a planning guide, not a mandatory schedule. Its dates are based on typical service life rather than a current condition assessment of your specific components. Councils should use it to know when to start paying attention to an item, then verify actual condition before committing to the work.
How much does a depreciation report cost in BC? Typically $5,000 to $30,000 depending on building size and complexity. The cost can be paid from either the operating fund or the contingency reserve fund, and that decision requires only a majority vote.
Does spending from the contingency reserve fund need a 3/4 vote? Usually yes — but not if the expenditure is for repair, maintenance, or replacement recommended in the strata's most current depreciation report. In that case section 96 of the Strata Property Act requires only a majority vote. Emergency repairs require no vote.
How often should a council review its depreciation report? There's no legal requirement beyond obtaining an updated report every five years. In practice, reviewing it annually alongside the budget is what keeps it useful — without a standing trigger, most reports go unopened until the next one is due.
Who can prepare a depreciation report? It must be prepared by a "qualified person" as defined in the Strata Property Regulation, which since the 2024 changes specifies designated professional groups rather than leaving the term open.
Can owners see the depreciation report? Yes. Depreciation reports are among the records a strata corporation must retain under section 35, and owners have the right to request and inspect them under section 36.
Pleno helps strata councils keep a building journal they own and control — a running record of maintenance, decisions, and building history that carries forward through every council change, independently of the property management company.
This article is general information about BC strata legislation, not legal advice. Confirm specifics for your strata with a qualified professional.