What are your strata documents saying?

0:00 – Strata Documents as Marketing Materials

0:00 Ryan Stenquist: My name is Ryan Stenquist, I'm the founder of Condo Clear Services. What we do is review and summarize strata documents for buyers, sellers and Realtors. We are province-wide, we're a fully licensed brokerage under the BCFSA, positive feedback, all that sort of stuff. But I'm not here to really explore our services. I'm actually going to talk about something that is really outside the scope of what we do but I think is really important, and that's strata documents.

0:26 And I did watch Wendy's presentation earlier, Wendy Wall from VISOA, and she did a great job of summarizing what strata corporations need to have, what they need to provide, what Realtors and lawyers and buyers will probably want to look at. So I'm going to kind of expand on that.

0:46 And the concept that I'm trying to convey here is something that, prior to starting Condo Clear I was a strata manager, I was a managing broker for one of the largest firms in the province, and I always looked at strata documents as what they're intended to be, which is the record of the strata corporation, decisions being made, financials, that sort of stuff.

1:07 And it wasn't until I started Condo Clear and we started summarizing these documents for buyers that I kind of shifted my perspective on these documents and realized that they're not only the official record of the strata corporation, but they're also marketing materials for any potential buyers. So oftentimes the first impression a potential buyer has when they're looking at the property is the documents. I shouldn't say first impression of the property, but first impression of the governance of the property is looking at the documents.

1:38 We see documents all the time that are organized very well, that are missing completely. So Wendy mentioned what is required to be provided. A lot of strata corporations and management companies, this isn't just self-managed stratas that are doing this, but a lot of management companies, we're talking 95 percent of the time when we receive a package it is incomplete. So, first impression, marketing materials. And I see this as a great opportunity.

2:09 – Formatting and File Naming Consistency

2:09 Ryan Stenquist: If you pay more attention to how your minutes are formatted, all these little things that are quite easy to do, it's a really good opportunity for you to demonstrate the value that your strata corporation can bring to any potential buyers or investors. Ease of reference is a really big thing. So formatting, formatting, formatting. This is huge. We see minutes that are changed from one month to the next.

2:35 We see incomplete items on those minutes. We see wording that just doesn't make any sense. We see missing files. I don't know how many times we get a document package and the file names don't give us any clue as to what it is, or they'll change how they're naming the files. So for instance, the council meeting minutes: keep that continuous. However you're labelling your council meeting minutes, that should be continuous throughout.

3:03 There shouldn't be five different styles of naming your council meeting minutes, because that's just confusing, and again leads to not being easy to reference and potentially frustration on behalf of buyers etc. And access is a big one. So going back to the 95 percent number, this is a huge issue within the BC strata industry. Like I said, 95 percent of the time we are not getting all the documents.

3:28 Oftentimes we point out these documents to the management company, to the strata corporation, and they don't even have them available. These are things that are required under the Strata Property Act for the strata corporation to keep, and they are required to be provided upon request to an authorized person. So this is something that there's a failure on multiple levels here to actually ensure that buyers are getting these documents.

3:51 So again, from a strata corporation perspective, you can stand out simply by doing exactly what you should be doing: providing a package of documents that is easy to reference, everything is complete, there's no stress, and just make it as streamlined as possible. So I'm going to go over the documents that we request, and I'm going to point out some of the main issues that we often see with these documents.

4:17 – Form B: Use the Prescribed Version

4:19 Ryan Stenquist: I won't get into too much detail with the documents themselves because I think Wendy already did a really great job with that, but these are certain things that we see happening over and over and over again. So the Form B is arguably the crux of the strata document package. Use the prescribed version. Believe it or not, there are strata corporations out there and management companies that are still using the version of the Form B that was prior to, I think, 2012 or 2011, when it became mandatory to include the parking and storage information.

4:52 We still see those forms every once in a while. This is a prescribed form under the Strata Property Act, and it's recently changed again. But this is a prescribed form, which means you have to use that form. Don't cut corners, don't try and fit it all onto one page, just use the form that's there. You're trying to reinvent the wheel and oftentimes it results in information not being conveyed properly.

5:15 Fill it out completely. Oftentimes we see sections of the Form B that just aren't filled out. So whether it's, if there's no storage lockers, some strata corporations will just not fill out the storage portion. Well, there's an option for that, you just click off there's no storage lockers. What we often see is, there's a little checklist at the end of the Form B that has the documents that have to be provided with the Form B, like the current budget, the depreciation report, the rules, soon to be the insurance certificate.

5:43 – Financial Statements and Bookkeeping Software

5:43 Ryan Stenquist: A lot of strata corporations or management companies don't fill out that checklist, and that checklist is important because it tells us and it tells the buyers whether or not those documents exist. Current financials: this is more geared towards self-managed strata corporations. I have yet to see a professional management company that wasn't providing councils, or strata owners, with monthly financial statements. Maybe it exists out there, but in five years and a couple thousand reviews I've yet to see that.

6:16 At this point, for the self-managed strata corporations, this conference has been a great demonstration of all the tools that are available to help ease the burden on councils, because it's not an easy job. I get it, volunteers, I've been there myself in the past. So utilizing tools to help you do the job better is a win-win situation for the owners, for the property values, for potential buyers, and for the council themselves, because you're saving time.

6:45 Use bookkeeping software. It's relatively cheap, things like QuickBooks Online. I can't remember the name of the other one, but there's a ton of different options for online bookkeeping software that cost between $20 and $30 a month. It makes it so much easier. You can print out a financial statement at any given time, a lot of the processes are automated.

7:06 – Depreciation Reports and Insurance Certificates

7:06 Ryan Stenquist: It just makes no sense not to engage in a program like that if you're a self-managed strata. Depreciation reports: make sure it's current. So Jeremy was talking about this yesterday, there's likely legislation changes coming down the pipe that's going to mandate strata corporations, A, having a depreciation report, B, having to renew it or update it every three years. Personally I fully support that and I agree, it's been a long time coming.

7:36 So, a newer depreciation report. If you have something from 2014, 2015, those numbers are not very accurate anymore, so it leaves a lot of question in the minds of potential buyers as far as risk for special levies, that sort of stuff goes. The other thing we come across on a regular basis is, provide the final completed version. So we often get draft depreciation reports, which there could be significant changes between the draft and the final version.

8:02 We sometimes get versions of the depreciation report that don't include any funding models. Well, at that point that depreciation report is almost useless from a projection standpoint, to try and figure out what special levies are coming. You have to include those funding models, that is the meat and potatoes of that depreciation report. The insurance certificate, and this is something that I'm really happy to see getting a lot more attention.

8:26 Unfortunately it was due to the whole insurance crisis. But when I started Condo Clear six years ago it was oftentimes that we were not getting insurance certificates. This was something that I really had to fight for in some cases, because everybody's mentality at that point was like, oh, every strata corporation has insurance, it's no problem, like it's just an assumption. And unfortunately that's not true, and especially the insurance crisis really pointed this out.

8:49 You can have deductibles that are very detrimental to individual owners, you can have premiums that are very high. So making sure that you have a copy of the current policy. Again, oftentimes we get policies that are... I was just working on a review yesterday where the policy that we were provided was from October of 2022. That's useless at that point. We often get copies of the proposal, so their insurance policy may have expired three months ago but they're still sending out a copy of the proposal rather than the finalized policy, and that's not good enough.

9:27 Make sure you have a copy of the current policy to give out to any potential buyers, Realtors, lawyers.

9:31 – Consolidating Bylaws and Rules

9:35 Ryan Stenquist: Bylaws and rules: this is a huge thing again, and I think Shawn spoke about this yesterday. Properly compile your bylaws. I don't know how often times we see a group of amendments. Sometimes you can have 20 different amendments to a bylaw package that was filed in 1979, and at that point it makes it very, very difficult to determine what is actually active and what isn't, because you have to go back through it in chronological order to see which bylaws have been repealed and replaced, or which bylaws have been amended.

10:08 And it just makes it very messy and makes it very difficult for owners to understand what their actual rights and obligations are. I fully endorse getting a strata lawyer involved every, say, I don't know, three to five years, to just review your bylaws and update them. It is an expense, unfortunately, but it's really, really necessary because a lot of strata corporations are operating with bylaws that they think are enforceable, but in fact may not be.

10:33 – Registered Strata Plans From LTSA

10:36 Ryan Stenquist: So having a bylaw package that's a singular, comprehensive bylaw package is very, very attractive to any potential buyer. Strata plan, LTSA version: so a lot of strata corporations, and Wendy talked about this, and I think the last fellow, I can't remember his name, touched on this as well. It's really important to have the registered version of the strata plan along with any of the amendments.

11:04 Unfortunately what we see from a lot of strata corporations is they get a copy of the developer's disclosure statement, or statements depending on if there are any amendments, and then they use the strata plan, the voting schedule, the unit entitlement from that disclosure statement. Well, the problem is that disclosure statement oftentimes isn't fact. That's a record of the intention of the developer, but it can change. What ends up getting filed in Land Titles is often very different.

11:32 So make sure, and I recommend this to every strata corporation out there, if you haven't done so already, is go to the Land Title Office and copy everything that is on there. Take a copy of your strata plan even if you already have one, take a copy of your bylaws even if you think you already have one, a copy of your unit entitlement, any of those changes, just download it.

11:53 It'll cost a few hundred dollars, but then at least you can ensure that the documents you have are accurate and correct. We receive bylaw packages from strata corporations on a regular basis that are not filed in Land Titles. They are not valid, they are not enforceable. Or we receive copies of bylaws that are old sets of bylaws, they may be three or four years old, and since then there's been two or three amendments to it.

12:15 Well, that's no longer current. There is some liability to strata corporations if you provide false information.

12:21 – Clear AGM and Council Meeting Minutes

12:23 Ryan Stenquist: AGM minutes and council minutes: I'm actually going to go into more detail on this, but the point I want you to take away from this is, be as clear and concise as you can be. So AGMs and SGMs, include the resolutions. We do see AGM and SGM minutes sometimes that don't have the resolution wording actually within the minutes, which there may be some legal consequences to that.

12:49 And oftentimes the voting results are somewhat ambiguous or confusing. So make sure you're clear on those things. Bold them, have a separate line, just make it easier for people to understand what's going on. Council meeting minutes, and this is a big one, because council meeting minutes vary significantly across the board. What one strata corporation does, another strata corporation, you go the complete opposite direction. Unfortunately the Act doesn't really give much guidance as far as the format of the minutes, or what is to be included.

13:18 So you have to go to things like Robert's Rules of Order, or kind of the accepted principles of taking minutes of meetings. But the big thing is, and we see this more often in self-managed stratas, is the minutes shouldn't be a verbatim record of the discussion itself. It should be factual. It should have a summary of what the issue is, whether it's a bylaw violation, whether it's getting a window wash, anything.

13:42 Summary of what the situation is, the current status of that right now, and then whatever decision it is to move forward. So here's an example of this. Say there is a water leak. The summary portion is: on April 1st there was a water leak incident which affected units 303, 203 and 204, stemming from a ruptured pipe in a common wall. Very straightforward, you know exactly what the situation is.

14:04 The status of it currently is that ABC Restoration attended the site to begin remediation efforts, and John Doe Plumbing has repaired the pipe. The strata corporation's insurance company has been notified. That's the current status. And the decision, if any, from council is: the council is currently awaiting a response from the adjuster before further action is taken. So if you use this type of template for all of your council meeting minutes, it goes a long way to making sure the information is clear.

14:31 Again, you don't need to talk about John's preference or Susie's preference, or which restoration company necessarily they want to go with, or that sort of stuff. That doesn't necessarily belong in the minutes. There are certain situations of course where things are more complex and it requires a bigger explanation, but generally speaking, probably for 90 percent of the entries within council meeting minutes, this type of format works really well.

15:01 So aside from the documents that we've talked about now, which were kind of the standard documents, they come with pretty much every Form B package.

15:05 – Form V and Wrong Strata Fees

15:07 Ryan Stenquist: There are some things that we have identified in the last five years since we started doing these reviews that are also really material to reviewing a strata document package for potential buyers. So the Form V, which some of you have probably never even heard of before. It's not really talked about much. This is the schedule of unit entitlement that is for any buildings built after, I think, 2000, and after.

15:35 Strata plans will have a separate Form V, which is the schedule of unit entitlement. Prior to 2000, excuse me, prior to 2000 this was included on the strata plan. The reason why we request this form is, we see about 35 to 40 percent of strata corporations are actually charging the wrong fees. This is something that we review as part of our process, but this is a huge issue.

15:59 There is no reason why a strata corporation should be charging the wrong strata fees. Again, make sure you get this version from the LTSA, don't rely on the developer's disclosure statement, because there could have been changes before it was filed in Land Titles.

16:09 – Notice Packages Under Sections 35 and 36

16:13 Ryan Stenquist: AGM and SGM notice packages: I was really happy to hear Wendy emphasize this one as well, because we get a lot of pushback sometimes from management companies, and unfortunately a lot of self-managed strata corporations aren't even providing AGM and SGM notice packages. That is an issue, because that's a requirement out of the Act. If they fail to provide a notice package, that meeting and any decisions made therein could be held as invalid.

16:41 Section 35 and 36 of the Act, again this is something that we sometimes get pushed back on from management companies saying, oh, we're not required to keep those on file, we're not required to provide those upon request. Yes they are, under Section 35 and 36 of the Act. The AGM notice packages fall under correspondence. It's a strata corporation sending them out to the owners, that's clearly correspondence.

17:03 It's a requirement of the Act to send them. I don't really see much argument there. But it is something that contains a lot of really important information: the budgets, the year-end financials. Oftentimes there's reports from council, from the council president or council treasurer. Sometimes there's quotes from contractors if there's a big remediation or something on the floor. Oftentimes there'll be additional information in those packages that doesn't make it into the minutes.

17:31 Professional engineering reports: the standard subject that Realtors use often identifies engineering reports, and we often see strata corporations not providing these unless specifically requested. So you'll just say something along the lines of, we request any and all engineering reports, but yet through the course of our reviews, reading the minutes, we often see a ton of different reports that are never provided. So this is stuff that buyers are entitled to see.

17:59 Again, there's a failure potentially from the strata corporation or the management company, and the Realtors, to ensure that these documents are actually being provided to the end buyers. So again, going back to making this process streamlined and easy as possible, if the strata corporations are just forthcoming with that information it goes a long way to a pleasurable experience to somebody who could potentially be your new neighbour.

18:12 – Warranty Reviews and Strata Lot Correspondence

18:26 Ryan Stenquist: Warranty information: any buildings within 10 years old are covered by the 2-5-10 warranty. You should have a copy of the warranty certificate, which lays out those expiration dates, and ideally you also have reports based on those expiration dates. So in an ideal world a strata corporation should be doing a warranty review prior to the 15 month expiration, prior to the two-year, prior to the five year and prior to the ten year.

18:51 A lot of strata corporations are ill-equipped or ill-informed when it comes to warranty stuff, but in my experience, I do have a great deal of experience dealing with new home warranty and strata corporations, I have yet to see a situation where the cost of getting a report done didn't result in at least that amount of deficiencies being found and repaired by the developer. Sometimes it's a fight, sometimes it can become legal, but ultimately I think it's really silly to not go ahead and take advantage of that warranty while you can.

19:24 And last but not least, any correspondence related to the strata lots. This could be alteration agreements, this could be complaints. Complaints are more specific. If somebody's buying a unit as potentially an investment unit or a rental property and the tenants are still in there, it's important to see all those complaints. And this is difficult from a strata management side of things. It can be really hard to properly file those types of documents in a way that's easily accessible.

19:50 So that's a challenge that potentially can be filled through one of the online archiving systems or something of that nature. But it is important that if there is any correspondence related to that specific strata lot, that that be provided by the strata corporation as well. And I think, yeah, that is it. What's my time like?

20:09 Ryan Grant: Awesome. Yeah, we have a few questions here, for sure. Let me pull them up. I'll just start posting them in here.

20:47 – Q&A: File Names, Financials and Audits

20:47 Ryan Grant: Okay, so John has asked: Ryan, in a relatively young strata of three years old, would you recommend making the effort to reformat all past documents, i.e. AGM, SGM and council meetings?

20:59 Ryan Stenquist: No. I think what would be useful in that situation is reformatting the file names at least, so everything is so there's some continuity there and it's easy to reference. Quite often, what I prefer is I just like labelling them as council meeting, and then brackets and the date within the brackets. It's very simple, you know what it is. Some strata corporations go more complex than that, but I don't see a need for it.

21:22 Generally speaking I think the simplest solution is usually the best one. So I wouldn't necessarily go back and reformat all those documents, but going forward, if you can start now, that would be very useful. Like I said, format the file names. Man, that would make things so much easier for so many people.

21:52 Ryan Grant: So Patricia's asked: our statement contains a month-by-month roll-up, year to date, percent to budget, CRF contributions, income and expenses. Do we need to send every month since the last AGM, or will the most recent roll-up described above be sufficient for real estate?

22:07 Ryan Stenquist: Yeah, great question. And I see Realtors do this all the time, is they will request all the financial statements for the last two years. There's no need for that. If you just provide the most current one, that gives you a good idea of what's happened in the last two years based on what that statement says. Some strata corporations, some management companies, I think they provide all 12 or 24 months of financial statements because it's a money generator for them, because now people are paying 25 cents per page for that information that quite frankly is useless.

22:37 We don't look at it at all. We look at the year-end financials for the last two or three years, and we look at the most current financial statement. That's it. So yeah, it's a good standard practice I think for any strata corporation to automatically include a copy of the most recent financials along with a Form B. That's usually the easiest way to do it.

23:05 Ryan Grant: Joy asks: our council never provides the agenda for the meetings to owners who wish to observe the meetings, either in advance nor during the meeting itself. Is this normal? Can they provide, or are they prohibited in providing the agenda?

23:19 Ryan Stenquist: Good question. It's not a common practice to provide a copy of the agenda. That's typically just a meeting item for the council members themselves. Whether or not it's required to be provided, that may fall under the correspondence portion of Section 35 and 36. So if somebody really wants to see that agenda then you may have to provide it. But keep in mind that you also have two weeks to provide this information, so from a practical standpoint it's not like you are necessarily required to provide it before the meeting, nor are you required to react immediately to those requests.

24:00 So I mean, I don't see any reason not to provide them to owners. If you have owners that are actively engaged and want to see the agenda, I don't see any harm in it whatsoever.

24:08 Ryan Grant: So what's the cost of Ryan's services?

24:17 Ryan Stenquist: Honestly, it's probably best if you go to condoclear.ca. We have a rundown of our prices and what we do there, rather than me promoting it in this venue. Who is our typical client? It's often Realtors and buyers, so it depends. Some Realtors will get this done as part of their service, it depends on their business model. I'd say we're split probably about 30 percent Realtors versus 70 buyers.

24:51 Ryan Grant: Do stratas, and should stratas, have third parties like yourself review documents even when not having a sale, for added insight and guidance?

24:57 Ryan Stenquist: It's not a bad idea, quite frankly. This is something that I've thought about offering, but I haven't really gotten into it a whole lot. It's not a service that we have packaged ready to go for strata corporations. But ultimately there's really no reason why a strata corporation couldn't get just one of our buyer's reviews done in that situation. If a strata were to say, or a strata owner comes to us and says, hey, we kind of want an audit of how we're doing and any suggestions, that really wouldn't be a big deal.

25:26 We just have to shift our perspective from a buyer's perspective to a strata governance perspective. But yeah, it's definitely something that's easily done. Along the lines of what we're talking about today, with documents and making sure that they're accessible and well packaged and easy to reference, something else we could do is an audit of just the documents that you're providing. We can just go through your documents, not necessarily in detail, we're not looking for the issues in the strata corporation, but just looking at the formatting of the documents, what's provided, point out things that are missing.

25:57 Because again, 95% of the time things are missing.

26:00 – Q&A: Minutes, Fees and Company Background

26:00 Ryan Stenquist: And we can probably do that relatively cheaply and easily if there's any stratas out there that are interested.

26:08 Ryan Grant: RPM is using a software platform where the minutes end up being 50 pages of data. I don't find these concise.

26:13 Ryan Stenquist: No, absolutely, that would actually be very, very horrible. I don't... I can't speak to who that may be. I haven't run across any management companies that were providing documents that were that excessive. Yeah, I'm guessing that the minutes probably are not very concise and probably really confusing to read.

26:40 Ryan Grant: A review depends on the strata corporation?

26:43 Ryan Stenquist: Because they tend to vary in volume and complexity, but it can be anywhere from two hours to six hours, to the outliers. And actually we just recently did one on Arbutus Ridge, which was being talked about earlier, which is a very, very large strata corporation, essentially it's a small municipality. And I think that one took us about 13 hours to do total.

27:24 Ryan Grant: The Strata Property Act regulation: surely the strata property regulation doesn't enable a third party or private business to charge for statutory SPA records?

27:35 Ryan Stenquist: You know what, I can't answer that question for you. As far as I can see it, and this is just a very loose opinion because it's not something I've looked into, the way that I believe these companies operate is they're not actually taking the income from the documents themselves. That is going directly to the strata corporation. So the third party service isn't taking that money, but there is a fee for using their platform.

27:58 So I think that is a bit of a roundabout, and maybe I'm wrong. And I think Sean from StrataPress is going to be presenting this afternoon as well, so he can probably give you more insight into that, because that's exactly what their business is.

28:18 Ryan Grant: A great presentation. Nailed it on many friends in such a short presentation. Excellent, thank you. Consistency, proper naming conventions and structure, the key to good records. Question is, is Condo Clear a record auditing firm?

28:30 Ryan Stenquist: So like I said, no, this isn't something that we've done in the past, but quite frankly I don't see any reason why we couldn't do it. Just loosely thinking in my head, I think it would be quite simple for us to take a strata corporation's documents and audit them and give you feedback on what you can do better to make that more accessible to people.

28:56 Ryan Grant: If a meeting is recorded, can the recording be used in lieu of actual written minutes, or to supplement the minutes?

29:04 Ryan Stenquist: Good question. That's not something I've ever looked at myself. I don't think so. I think the wording of the Act talks about written minutes. I could be wrong there. But as far as a supplement to the minutes, I don't see why that's a problem at all. There are some strata corporations that have bylaws specifically governing recording of meetings, or there will be a vote. Oftentimes you'll see with AGMs there'll be a majority vote at the beginning of the meeting to consent to recording of the meeting.

29:31 Where it gets into the law, from a legal perspective, from a privacy perspective, my understanding is, and again I can be wrong because this is not my area of expertise at all, but as long as one party knows that the recording is happening, I think that that is also okay too. That's why I think some strata corporations have passed specific bylaws stating that meetings are not to be recorded.

29:58 But I would check with a lawyer or the Privacy Commissioner on that one for sure.

30:08 Ryan Grant: Awesome. So we'll keep waiting for some questions to come in, but for now I thought I'd add in Craig, our co-founder, and he's a property manager as well, if people didn't catch that earlier yesterday when he was on quite a bit. And I figure this would be actually a very good segment for us to all kind of chat and touch base on this topic that you've been talking about.

30:33 Hello Craig.

30:34 Craig Moore: Hey Ryan. And Ryan, hey.

30:37 Ryan Stenquist: Craig.

30:37 Craig Moore: Ryan Stenquist, I'm curious, how long have you been operating Condo Clear, and where are your clients? Are they all across BC, are they farther away than BC?

30:48 Ryan Stenquist: Yeah, we are BC only. We have been in business for about five and a half years now, so September of 2017 when we started up. At that point this service did not exist in the province whatsoever. So we are still the only licensed document review company in the province. We do operate all over the province. We are based in Victoria, so that's kind of the epicentre of our business, as well as I spend a lot of time in the Okanagan.

31:17 But it is spreading. I see this potentially in five or ten years is going to be the standard. If you look at other provinces across Canada, services like this have existed for the last 20 or 30 years. Like Alberta, this has been a thing since the 90s. It's as widespread and prevalent as getting a home inspection done.

31:39 Craig Moore: Interesting. I get a lot of questions from Realtors that, very honestly, I don't always welcome. I wish that many Realtors were more well informed about strata, and about the different types of strata, and it's not really my job to educate them.

31:49 – Educating Realtors on Strata Documents

31:55 Craig Moore: So I hope that Realtors are asking you for this information.

32:01 Ryan Stenquist: Well, you know Craig, that's funny, because that was the impetus to me starting this company. Because I used to be a managing broker and strata manager as well, and our company policy was that we did not talk to buyers or Realtors at all, because A, like you said, it's outside the scope of our work. Most strata managers are way overworked and burning out without adding things that aren't their responsibility onto the pile.

32:29 Plus there's liability. If you say something wrong there's liability for you as an individual licensee, there's liability for your brokerage, there's also liability for the strata corporation because you're speaking as their representative. So our company policy was, we didn't answer any of those questions, we provided the documents as per the Act, and that was the extent of our involvement. However, I don't like telling people no without giving them a valid option to pursue, and at that point there was nobody we could direct them to other than, talk to your lawyer, talk to your lawyer.

32:59 So that's what really got me thinking about this as far as a service goes, so that people had a really good quality option to go to when they had these types of questions.

33:11 Craig Moore: Yeah. Ryan Grant and I have talked about this topic in broad terms in the past, and less generously to a degree. Ryan is a client of mine through his strata as well. But it is a big challenge for a buyer to try and understand the documents they're getting, understand what they're supposed to get. Hopefully the realtor is helping them with that, and there are many good Realtors who do that of course.

33:36 I've come across some very well-informed Realtors, they've got experience and good knowledge, but it is hard to understand strata documents. So I'm welcoming services like yours, and other services that are bringing better education to a strata owner. And I wonder where that's going as we get better online information. Maybe there's a future for automation in property management that we don't see yet, and it's emerging from what we're all able to do now.

34:15 And I'm looking forward to it from that point of view. There's a lot more to come that we don't know yet.

34:23 Ryan Stenquist: Yeah. One of the big things that we are starting to undertake, we've done this to a limited degree for the last couple of years, is actually providing educational content for Realtors. So it's not really focused on strata owners or buyers, but it's more for them, because they're the ones dealing with the front line of these transactions, right? So that's something that we're continuing to develop. And I do have like a 10 session education program that we're going to start making available to Realtors in the next few months.

34:52 – Reviewing Sectioned Stratas and Types

34:52 Ryan Stenquist: But yeah, education is key to a lot of this, especially as it continues to get more and more.

35:00 Craig Moore: When you're receiving requests to review a set of documents, how is it different when you get that with a strata corporation that has sections, and it's a variety of ways it's presented to you? And what advice do you give them?

35:17 Ryan Stenquist: Well, I don't necessarily provide any specific advice just because it's a section building. There often is a lot of education, because this is something that even within the strata management industry sections are poorly understood. I see a lot of professionally managed section buildings that are not managed the way that they should be. I see section buildings that only have one Form B, and this is a management company doing this.

35:42 They are very much more difficult, and I get why it's so hard to understand, but ultimately the reality is they're two or three or four or five separate entities. And as long as people look at them as completely separate entities and forget about the strata corporation as a whole, it's easier to absorb that. So the way that I usually phrase it to people, which has seemed to work, is look at a sectioned building like the government of Canada.

36:13 So you have the strata corporation is the federal government, and then you have the provinces which are the individual sections. So there's certain things that the federal government is responsible for, the strata corporation, that's the structure of the building, the building envelope etc. And then you have the individual sections which are like provinces, and anything that affects only them is their responsibility. If there's a gym that only the residential owners have access to, or a hot tub or pool, that sort of stuff, the elevator, oftentimes that's a residential only expense.

36:44 Whereas the commercial may have a commercial parking lot that's only for commercial tenants and customers, that's going to be a commercial responsibility there. So it is something that is not very well understood, but is becoming more and more common, more and more prevalent. So people better start getting educated on it. And then you can go and throw in air space parcels along with that as well, which quite frankly is a lot simpler to understand from a strata governance perspective.

37:12 In many ways it's easier than sections, but from a legal standpoint it can be more.

37:21 Craig Moore: Yeah, true enough, true enough. I've managed a few different sectioned stratas and I do have a couple currently, and others that our company takes care of. They're notoriously hard to understand, especially for the owners, and awkward to deal with with documents. There's no two ways about it. It's a whole level, it's not just twice as difficult, it's more than that. It's a higher level of sophistication, you have to pay attention very carefully.

37:53 Ryan Stenquist: I'm curious, more difficult and you charge a third as much money?

37:55 Craig Moore: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it. Not that there's a lot of relevance to this, but do you see a lot of stratas with types defined, and then that shows up on their budget? Does it have any relevance to what you're doing?

38:10 Ryan Stenquist: Not very often, no. I think types is a great tool under the Strata Property Act, but there's a lot of strata corporations that are not actually utilizing those. I think in many cases, I looked at a 30 unit townhouse building not too long ago that had one commercial lot and they were sectioned, and I said, well, the cost of administration of having a section building when you really don't need it, there's no benefit here at all.

38:36 You can utilize types to do the same kind of thing and it's going to cost you a lot less, it's much easier. So I'm glad you brought that up, because I would like to see types being utilized a lot more rather than sections.

38:54 Craig Moore: Yeah, they could be used to great effect, as well as user fees, which stratas can now incorporate in their bylaws. That's something that was done in the past but not done properly, because perhaps it wasn't done legally. But that's a useful tool as well.

39:11 Ryan Stenquist: Yeah, I agree, absolutely.

39:11 Ryan Grant: Yeah, interesting. Ryan Grant, I'm... yeah, exhaustive questions, but it's very interesting, and it's a great topic.

39:19 Craig Moore: For me, all the time.

39:23 – Turnaround Times and Obtaining Documents

39:23 Craig Moore: I don't think my clients understand how often I see forms on my desk or on my computer that I have to review and then sign and take a lot of responsibility for, quite honestly. And 2022 was a banner year, oh my goodness, did we ever get a lot of forms.

39:42 Ryan Grant: I do wonder though... oh, you're kind of lagging there, one second, let me catch up. Oh perfect, okay. So I was just wondering actually, Ryan, with your service, do you have a lot of Realtors coming to you just in that last minute? And like you say, it doesn't take too long to review things, but you must get a lot of clients queued up, and then it might be, you know, a couple of weeks out or something.

40:11 So what do you advise people for that kind of time, to make sure that they come to you not, you know, at the very last second really needing your service?

40:20 Ryan Stenquist: Right. So we've got a couple of different ways to deal with that. So our standard is two to five business days. That's what we ask for. Most of the time we can get it done within that time frame. The challenge on my side has been that we are very busy, but finding the experienced people that live up to my standard to actually review these documents. And I've had some situations with staff that I've hired that had a great deal of experience in the industry, were strata managers for many years, were managing brokers even, that did not meet my personal level of experience standard.

40:54 So that's one of the biggest things that holds us back, is just having the staff. The good news is, and I'm actually happy to announce this for the first time here, is I have an old team member who is coming back, who went back into the strata management world as a managing broker for a very large firm, and is now coming back to Condo Clear to continue reviewing strata documents.

41:13 So that's really exciting, that basically doubles our capacity right there. But to get to your question, if somebody has a last minute review, they need it done within a couple of days, it's needed done over a weekend or something like that, we do try to accommodate those. There are additional fees, we charge a rush fee in those situations. And ultimately it's the reviewer's option, it's up to them if they want to do that, because they're the ones spending time away from their families doing overtime etc to get that review done for people.

41:43 And you know what, 95% of the time we can make it.

41:48 Ryan Grant: Perfect. And then another good question is, do they always bring you all the documents, or do they actually try and get you to go and, you know, get them directly, you know, through the strata or something like that?

41:59 Ryan Stenquist: I would love if there was a way for us to obtain the documents directly. Unfortunately it's very complicated, because we provide this service as a non-agent. We are not an agent of the buyer. We're doing this strictly as a customer transaction, so we don't have any authority to speak on their behalf. We don't have authorization from the original seller to obtain those documents.

42:24 So oftentimes what happens is we send a list to the buyer's agent of everything that's missing, the buyer's agent sends that to the listing agent, the listing agent then sends that to the strata corporation, and then we've played five different levels of separation here, five different degrees of separation, before we actually get the documents. The easiest way that I've found to handle that is I tell the buyer's agent, tell the listing agent to email the strata corporation, CC me, and then we can have a group conversation.

42:55 I can help streamline this situation. But my brain has been turning for the last three or four years on how to streamline that process, because if we can cut out all the middle people and I can deal directly with the strata corporation it would make everybody's lives much easier.

43:09 Ryan Grant: Yes, and faster too, right? Yeah, you know, just removing somebody usually helps speed up processes.

43:17 Ryan Stenquist: Absolutely.

43:17 Ryan Grant: Yeah, awesome. Okay, well thank you for joining us today. We'll jump into our next segment, but that was really awesome and we'll definitely have you on again in the future. So thank you so much, Ryan.

43:29 Ryan Stenquist: Excellent, thanks for having me.

43:31 Ryan Grant: Yes.