How to Read a Strata Depreciation Report Before You Buy a Condo

A strata depreciation report helps organise questions about the future maintenance, repair, and replacement of common components. The province describes a planning horizon of 30 years. A projection is not a promise that the work will occur on an exact date or cost the amount shown. Start by identifying the report's date and assumptions, then connect it to the records available for the particular building.

Check the requirement and the document you received

As checked September 9, 2026, BC requires strata corporations with five or more strata lots to obtain depreciation reports on the applicable schedule. The former option to waive the requirement by annual vote has been removed. Check the provincial requirements and transition dates for the particular strata.

The province now describes a five-year reporting cycle, with transition arrangements that need to be checked for the corporation. Use the current provincial requirements rather than a statement in an older article that the strata can simply vote to defer the report. Ask why a requested document is absent and what information is available to address the gap.

Read the projections alongside current decisions

Make an index of the components relevant to your questions. Record the report page, the assumption, and the follow-up needed. If work appears to be approaching, ask what later records say about its assessment, planning, or completion. Do not assume a matter was resolved merely because it stops appearing in the material you received.

Keep projected figures separate from approved amounts and current quotations. If two figures appear inconsistent, preserve both sources and ask what each one covers. Comparing numbers without their scope can make the review look more precise while leaving the underlying question unanswered.

Ask how funding and work connect

Read the report with the current budget and available meeting records. Identify questions about which approach is being followed and what has changed since the report was prepared. A reserve balance on its own does not explain all the obligations attached to a property. Nor does the gap between two figures reliably predict a particular future levy.

Ask an appropriate professional to explain technical matters outside your expertise. Describe the concern and its source rather than diagnosing the building from a sentence in a report. Record any recommended specialist follow-up as unresolved until you understand the answer and the scope of the assessment.

The rules changed, and the dates have now passed

This is the part that has moved most, and an article written before 2024 will tell you the wrong thing.

Since July 1, 2024, a strata corporation with five or more strata lots must obtain a depreciation report on a five-year cycle. Corporations with four or fewer lots remain exempt. The option that used to exist, an annual three-quarter vote to defer the report, has been removed entirely, so a strata can no longer decide to go without one.

The phase-in deadlines matter for a buyer reading documents today. Strata corporations in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and the Capital Regional District had to obtain their first report under the new rules by July 1, 2026. Everywhere else in British Columbia the deadline is July 1, 2027. A strata corporation created on or after July 1, 2024 and before July 1, 2027 must get a report within two years of its first annual general meeting, then every five years.

So for a building anywhere in Metro Vancouver with five or more lots, that deadline is in the past. If the documents you receive contain no depreciation report obtained under the current rules, that is a question to ask rather than a gap to accept.

There is also a rule about who may write one. Since July 1, 2025, a report must come from one of the designated professional groups: engineers, architects, applied science technologists, accredited appraisers, certified reserve planners and quantity surveyors. On October 27, 2025 that list was expanded to add professional licensee engineers, architectural technologists and certified technicians. Check who prepared the report you are reading and whether they fall inside that list.

What the report has to contain

Knowing the required contents tells you what to look for, and what is missing.

A depreciation report must include a physical component inventory based on an on-site inspection, covering the structural, mechanical and amenity systems. It must include an executive summary. It must include 30-year cost projections with the inflation and interest assumptions stated. And it must include at least three cash-flow funding models for the contingency reserve fund over 30 years, which may involve special levies, increased strata fees, borrowing, or a combination.

Those three models are the most useful pages in the document and the most commonly skipped.

The three funding models, and which one the strata is actually using

Each model describes a different way of paying for the same work. One will usually raise strata fees steadily and avoid large levies. Another will keep fees low and rely on special levies when work arrives. A third sits between them.

The model the strata is actually following, out of the three, is what decides what you will pay.

Find that model by comparing the current annual budget and the current contingency reserve fund balance against the models in the report. If the reserve fund balance sits well below the path of every model, the building is on a course toward levies regardless of what any document says. If fees have been held flat for several years while the report assumed increases, the same conclusion follows.

• Find the three models and note what each assumes about fees and levies
• Read the current budget and the current reserve fund balance
• Compare the actual balance against each model's path for this year
• Ask the council which model the strata has adopted, and when it decided

Read the minutes against the report, not instead of it

The report describes the building as it was on the date of the inspection. The minutes describe what has happened since, and they are where problems appear first, often months before any levy is proposed.

Read at least two years of council and general meeting minutes with the report open beside them. Look for the components the report flagged with a short remaining life, and see whether the minutes discuss them. A roof the report gave four years, discussed in the minutes as an engineering assessment awaiting quotes, is a different situation from the same roof never mentioned again.

Watch for work that stops being mentioned. Ask the strata council directly what happened to any item that drops out of the minutes, since the silence alone tells you nothing about whether the work got done.

• Components the report gave a short remaining life, traced through the minutes
• Any engineering or building envelope assessment commissioned
• Any levy proposed, approved, or voted down, and by what margin
• Insurance claims, and any change in the deductible
• Litigation or disputes involving the corporation

The Form B and the reserve fund balance

The Form B Information Certificate gives you the figures as at a date: the monthly strata fee for the lot, the contingency reserve fund balance, any special levy approved and the amount attributed to that lot, and whether the corporation is party to any litigation.

Read it as a snapshot rather than as an assessment. A healthy reserve balance and a report whose recommendations are being funded is a genuine selling point for a building. The same balance in a building whose report identified a building envelope problem means something else entirely, because the balance has to be read against what the work will cost.

Where a special levy has been approved but not yet paid, find out which party the contract makes responsible for the amount attributed to the lot. That is a legal question about your contract, so ask your lawyer or notary rather than assuming the usual answer applies.

Keep a usable decision record

For each important issue, retain the source, the question, and the response. Mark missing information explicitly. Your next step may be requesting another record, arranging an assessment, or deciding that the home no longer fits your requirements. A document checklist helps organise that work; it does not approve the purchase.

Plan your next step

Use the strata review chapter to organise the documents, the home-buying guide to coordinate the search, and comparing homes to keep evidence separate from personal preferences.