Hi there! My name is Teresa Comeau, and I'm with Re/Max Select Realty, and we're located on Main St. in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's June 19, 2014. What I'm going to talk to you today about is Depreciation Reports. Now the BC government has legislated that all strata corporations of six units or more, need to do a depreciation report.
A depreciation report is a report about a building, and everything about the building as far as all the common property and common assets, including the roof, the envelope, balconies, plumbing, boiler system, everything that's in an apartment building. And what the report determines is what assets are there now, what required maintenance they need over the next 30 years. How much money does strata corporation has now, and how much money they're going to need to continue to repair and maintain this building. So it's a very useful report for buyers, and for lenders. Now the buyers will take a look at it and determine about how many assessments they'll have in the future, the general health of the building.
Same with the lenders. They want to know the financial health of the building. Now, some stratas can opt out of this requirement with a three-quarter vote from the owners, and some of the reasons they might opt out of it, is maybe they just need time to raise funds to do the report. Sometimes it's a newer building where they know a lot of other building, and they don't feel they need to have the report, and some buildings just aren't doing it.
And it'd be interesting to see how the market place changes and how lenders look at copies that don't have it. So, one of the other things that we'll see is probably an increase in strata fees. Now, the strata fees will likely see an increase because, well, for instance one strata corporation I was looking at, it was underfunded.
And after the report, they determined that they needed about 29 assessments over the next 30 years. And, so the strata corporation decided to increase the maintenance fees, $75 a month, and what that did, is it brought that 29 assessments down to 9 assessments over the next 30 years. So, likely a lot of strata corporations might take a look at their maintenance fees and realize that they can lower their assessments by increasing their fees.
So you probably will see fees go up. Now as a buyers' agent, I can help buyers interpret these reports and figure out how much money they might need to live in that property, over number of years that they plan to live there. For sellers, I can help them determine what the buyer's reaction will be to the report.
I can help them price the property due to the report, and also the timing in the market and timing of the report. So, if you have any questions, if you're a buyer or a seller, and you have any questions about depreciation reports, or any other real estate matter, I'd be happy to sit down and talk with you, or you can send me an email at teresa@teresacomeau.ca and my phone number is 604-240-1879, and thank for watching