An Administrator is a Last Resort, Not a Fix for Strata Conflict

WHAT IS AN ADMINISTRATOR?

An administrator is a person the Supreme Court appoints to take over some or all of a Strata Corporation's own powers and duties, in place of Council and the Owners, when the Strata's own governance has broken down (Strata Property Act, s.174). The Strata Corporation itself can apply, and so can an Owner, a tenant, a mortgagee, or any other person with an interest in a Strata Lot (s.174(1)). The court can appoint an administrator for a set period or an indefinite one, hand over as much or as little of the Strata's own powers and duties as it decides, and relieve the Strata Corporation of them to the same extent (s.174(3)).

An administrator's role is not adjudicative. As the court put it in appointing one, "his role is that of administrator," and, to be effective, "an administrator requires the confidence of the strata lot owners" (Andrews v. Leno, 2001 BCSC 963, para 36). That last point runs through everything below: an administrator who cannot win the Strata Community's own confidence has not actually fixed anything.

WHAT MUST BE SHOWN BEFORE A COURT WILL APPOINT AN ADMINISTRATOR?

A court must be satisfied that appointing an administrator is in the best interests of the Strata Corporation, a standard weighed against five factors the courts have developed since Lum v. Strata Plan VR519 (Owners of), 2001 BCSC 493:

• A demonstrated inability to manage the Strata Corporation.

• Demonstrated substantial misconduct or mismanagement.

• Whether an administrator is necessary to bring order to the Strata Corporation's affairs.

• A struggle among competing groups that is impeding proper governance.

• Whether an administrator is the only reasonable prospect of bringing order.

No single factor decides the application. The court weighs all five together against the facts before it, and the cost of the appointment itself is always part of that weighing (Lum, para 11). This is a genuinely open-ended, fact-sensitive inquiry, not a checklist an applicant can complete and expect to win.

WHY IS APPOINTING AN ADMINISTRATOR TREATED AS A LAST RESORT?

The court treats appointing an administrator as a last resort because it takes governance out of the Strata Community's own hands, and the case law says that should happen only when absolutely necessary. As Lum itself put it, "the democratic government of the strata community should not be overridden by the Court except where absolutely necessary" (para 12).

That restraint has teeth. In 1049442 B.C. Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 1669, 2018 BCSC 1631, twelve separate complaints were raised against a Strata Corporation — improper items on an AGM agenda, a fee overpayment, a fee undercollection, an unfair parking allocation, a budget that failed to pass, delayed repairs to a leaking ceiling. The court found the Strata's conduct "lax and sloppy in certain respects," but "not sufficiently egregious to justify the appointment of an administrator," and held that specific orders addressing each complaint were the better remedy than displacing the Strata's own government entirely (para 5). It is important to recognize that this is a genuine floor: conduct must fall well short of an administrator appointment before a Strata can rely on it, and the more targeted remedy is the one the court reaches for first.

IS CONFLICT OR ACRIMONY BETWEEN OWNERS ENOUGH ON ITS OWN?

It is reasonable to assume that any Strata dysfunctional enough to end up in court would qualify for an administrator, but conflict or acrimony between Owners is not enough on its own. The court must see an actual breakdown in the Strata's own ability to govern itself, not Owners who dislike each other, or a dispute one side lost.

Lum is a clear example, and has been relied on by several later judgments. Ten Owners sought an administrator after a dispute over the Strata's resident manager escalated into arbitration; nine of their twelve complaints traced back to that same dispute. The court found the building's condition "excellent" and under "active professional management" throughout, and refused the application, holding that even the "continuing acrimony and rancour" it could see traced to one group's dissatisfaction with the arbitration's result, not to any actual impediment to governance — "I am not, however, able upon an application of this nature to do more than adjudicate upon the application" (paras 26-30). The same pattern repeats elsewhere: in Yamagata v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 1546, 2019 BCSC 286, the court refused appointment because the Strata Council had "worked diligently and conscientiously to deal with difficult issues" (paras 60-61); and in Tepper v. The Owners, Strata Plan 785, 2018 BCSC 223, the court refused because the dispute was one Owner's alone, against an otherwise responsive Strata whose own missteps had already been fixed (para 110).

Contrast that with 0899148 B.C. Ltd. v. Ching, 2025 BCSC 1694, where an administrator was appointed after five years in which the Strata Corporation held no annual general meeting, elected no Council, and ignored its own contingency reserve fund and budget obligations. Or Anthony v. Schnapp, 2016 BCSC 1839, a two-lot strata where the two Owners each held half the votes and could not pass a single resolution — the court found that "informal structure no longer works for these owners" and that "formal structure needs to be followed" (para 52).

The law is about line drawing, and this is a clear line it draws. On one side are Owners who are frustrated with each other, or unhappy with a result they did not want. On the other are Stratas that genuinely cannot function — that cannot pass a resolution, cannot hold a productive meeting, cannot make a basic repair decision. A Strata sits on the acrimony side of that line when one faction remains upset about an arbitration outcome inside an otherwise well-run building (Lum), and on the governance-breakdown side when two Owners are locked at a permanent tie and nothing can pass at all (Anthony v. Schnapp).

CAN A COURT REFUSE TO APPOINT THE SPECIFIC PERSON PROPOSED?

A court can refuse to appoint the specific person proposed as administrator, even when the Strata's own dysfunction otherwise justifies an appointment.

In Yamagata, the petitioner proposed a managing broker at $225 an hour, supported only by her own second-hand description of a conversation with him — no affidavit from the nominee himself was filed. The court refused to appoint him on that ground alone, separately from its finding that the Lum factors were not otherwise made out (paras 62-64).

However, an unqualified nominee is not the only problem a proposed administrator can present. In Murphy v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR 1291, 2026 BCSC 634, the proposed administrator had already made public comments revealing a settled view on the very repair option the appointment was meant to investigate. The court found no suggestion of bad faith, but preferred "an administrator who has not yet expressed a view on the options" (para 115), because one side of the dispute could reasonably discount any recommendation from someone seen as having already made up his mind. That is the same confidence-based logic Andrews v. Leno describes: an administrator only restores governance if the Strata Community can actually accept the outcome, and a nominee whose own prior statements make that acceptance unlikely has not solved the problem, whatever their qualifications.

WHEN HAVE COURTS APPOINTED AN ADMINISTRATOR?

Courts have appointed an administrator when a Strata's own governance has genuinely stopped functioning, scoping the appointment to match the actual breakdown, not further.

Murphy is a good illustration of that scoping. The dysfunction the court found there was confined to a single repair issue — persistent water ingress on one wall of the building — with the rest of the Strata's affairs conceded to be properly managed. The administrator appointed was not given authority over the whole Strata; the order was limited "for the sole purpose of ensuring the strata corporation discharges its obligation under s.72(1)... to repair and maintain the building envelope on the west elevation" (para 121(d)). The remedy matched the actual problem, and nothing more.

Timing matters too. In The Owners, Strata Plan NW981, 2022 BCSC 2038, the court said it would have had "no hesitation in ordering an administrator to take over" based on the Strata's history of disrepair and unresponsiveness, but the Strata had made "a dramatic shift" since the petition was filed, producing records, holding an AGM, and completing nearly every repair an inspection report had identified (paras 25-26). The court held that the assessment is made as of the hearing date, not the date the petition was filed, and refused appointment on that basis (para 27). It also rejected the idea that the petitioner's own frustration settled the question, holding that "the subjective impression of the petitioner is not the issue" (para 24).

This is also not a remedy available anywhere but the Supreme Court. The Civil Resolution Tribunal has held it has no jurisdiction to appoint an administrator, because that power belongs to the Supreme Court alone under s.174 (Garry v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS2501, 2021 BCCRT 409, para 31). The tribunal has applied the same limit even to a lesser substitute: an order that a strata manager be given authority to make governance decisions without Council's involvement was refused, because that would functionally amount to an administrator appointment and fall outside the tribunal's own jurisdiction (Wagner v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 104, 2025 BCCRT 1665, paras 74-75).

AN ADMINISTRATOR RESTORES GOVERNANCE; IT DOES NOT SETTLE A DISPUTE BETWEEN OWNERS

The appointment of an administrator is the answer to only one question: is the Strata Corporation incapable of governing itself on the date of the court hearing. Appointing one replaces Council's and the Owners' own decision-making, temporarily and to whatever extent the court orders, so that repairs get decided, budgets get passed, and meetings produce resolutions. It does not answer why two Owners cannot get along, and it does not decide who was right in the underlying dispute between them.

That is why a court that finds a Strata's governance still intact will refuse the application, even when real acrimony exists (Lum; Yamagata;Tepper), and why a court that does appoint an administrator will limit the appointment to the actual governance failure it found, no further (Murphy). It is also why the proposed administrator's own neutrality matters as much as the Strata's own dysfunction: an administrator one side of the dispute cannot accept has not restored governance either (Murphy; Andrews v. Leno).

A robust and resilient Strata Community resolves its own disputes through Council, its bylaws, and the more targeted remedies the Strata Property Act already provides. An administrator is what happens once none of that is working, not a substitute for making it work in the first place.