BCLI recommends reforms to the Strata Property Act’s legal framework for common property, land titles, and fundamental changes
June 18, 2019
BY Kevin Zakreski
In the Report on Common Property, Land Titles, and Fundamental Changes for Stratas, the British Columbia Law Institute’s Strata Property Law Project Committee recommends amending the Strata Property Act and the Strata Property Regulation to shore up three key areas that help to define strata properties as interests in land.
Strata plans are at the heart of this report. Even though the reach of this report is more expansive than a systematic examination of strata plans, as the report considers common property, land titles, and fundamental changes for strata properties it ends up spending much of its time looking at legal issues in those three subjects from the standpoint of the issues’ effects on strata plans.
The report contains 25 recommendations for reform, on following topics:
- common property: the definitions of common property and limited common property, long-term leases of common property, and amending a strata plan under section 258 of the act to designate parking spaces (and, as the report proposes, storage lockers) as limited common property;
- land titles: emerging issues in subdivision control, depicting common property on strata plans, and Certificates of Payment;
- fundamental changes: lowering the voting threshold for some fundamental changes from a unanimous vote to an 80-percent vote.
The report also tackles how these recommendations may be implemented, in a chapter setting out draft legislation and regulations.
The report comes after the close of a three-month consultation process, held in winter 2018 and 2019, which garnered 51 responses. The committee fully considered these responses in making its final recommendations.
This report is the fifth and final report in BCLI’s Strata Property Law Project—Phase Two.
Quote
“The committee decided that there is some room for improvement with how the act deals with some of the building blocks for the strata-property legal framework. From the planning and conception of a strata property by its owner-developer through to the fundamental changes that strata-lot owners in a mature strata property may encounter, this report identifies a number of areas where the law may be changed for the better.”—Patrick Williams, Chair, Strata Property Law Project Committee
Quick links
- Report on Common Property, Land Titles, and Fundamental Changes for Stratas
- Backgrounder no. 16—Summary of Report on Common Property, Land Titles, and Fundamental Changes for Stratas
- Backgrounder no. 17—Report on Common Property, Land Titles, and Fundamental Changes for Stratas Legislative Fact Sheet
- Media Release no. 12—BCLI recommends reforms to the Strata Property Act’s legal framework for common property, land titles, and fundamental changes
- Strata Property Law (Phase Two) Project webpage
