Repair of Common Property and Significant Unfairness

Trevor Morley
Jul 3
3 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

IS EVERY REPAIR DELAY SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR?

Not every repair delay is significantly unfair, but a delay that becomes an oppressive failure of the Strata's own repair duty can be. A Strata Corporation must repair and maintain Common Property and common assets under s.72 of the Strata Property Act (Repair of property, s.72), and a failure to perform that duty, in circumstances a court determines to be oppressive, can result in financial sanctions under s.164 (Hill v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS 510, 2016 BCSC 1753). The standard that separates an ordinary delay from an oppressive one is reasonableness, not perfection.

WHAT STANDARD DOES A STRATA HAVE TO MEET WHEN IT REPAIRS COMMON PROPERTY?

A Strata has to act reasonably in the circumstances, not perform every repair immediately or perfectly. The s.72 repair-and-maintain duty does not require a Strata to perform repairs immediately or without flaw; the overarching test is reasonableness in the circumstances (Hirji v. The Owners Strata Corporation Plan VR 44, 2015 BCSC 2043). Our understanding is that a Strata is not an insurer of its own building; its obligation is to do all that can reasonably be done, and a Strata that acted reasonably is not at fault merely because the contractors it hired failed to fix the problem effectively (Wright v. The Owners, Strata Plan #205, 1996 CanLII 2460). The starting point for assessing whether a Strata met that standard is deference to the decision made by Council as approved by the Owners (Weir v. Owners, Strata Plan NW 17, 2010 BCSC 784).

For example, a Strata that investigates a leak, gets a professional opinion, budgets the repair, and completes the work over the following construction season has met the reasonableness standard, even though the Owner living with the leak would have preferred it fixed the same week.

WHEN DOES A DELAY STOP BEING REASONABLE?

A delay stops being reasonable once the building's condition makes the repair necessary and deferring it is no longer a practical option. Where a building has reached a state in which repairs are required to comply with the Strata's s.72 obligations, deferring or staging the bulk of those repairs to a later date is not a practical option; it is "kicking the can down the road" and continues a breach of the maintenance obligation (Davis v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 3411, 2020 BCSC 1434). It is important to recognize that this is a factual line, not a fixed number of years: it turns on whether the repair has become necessary, not merely overdue by some owner's preference.

DOES A SINGLE MISSED DEADLINE OR AN IMPERFECT RESPONSE MAKE A STRATA'S CONDUCT SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR?

A single missed deadline or an imperfect response does not, on its own, make a Strata's conduct significantly unfair. Isolated instances of easily rectifiable procedural irregularity are not significantly unfair, and a collection of individually trivial complaints does not become significantly unfair simply by being added together (Tafti v. Davis, 2024 BCSC 176). This is because the s.72 standard is reasonableness, not perfection: a Strata that responds promptly, investigates properly, and then makes one scheduling error is meeting its duty in substance, even though the individual error would look bad in isolation.

NOT EVERY DELAY CROSSES THE LINE, BUT AN OPPRESSIVE ONE CAN

The s.72 repair-and-maintain duty is a reasonableness standard, and a Strata that acts reasonably, even imperfectly, is not at risk under s.164 merely because a repair took longer than an Owner wanted. However, once a repair has become genuinely necessary, deferring it stops being a practical option, and continuing to defer it can cross from an ordinary delay into an oppressive breach of the Strata's own duty, with real financial consequences. A robust and resilient Strata Community moves from investigation to action once a repair is actually needed, rather than treating "eventually" as a substitute for a plan.