Questions owners and councils actually ask.
What strata building oversight is, how it differs from a depreciation report, what gets inspected, and how pricing is calculated. Most councils are made up of owners who care about their property value but were never staffed to act as a building's technical department. These answers are written with that in mind.
Drone rules over occupied buildings in BC.
What Transport Canada requires before a drone flies near a building, and what that means for the footage that ends up in your record.
What certification is required to fly a drone over a building in BC?
Flying close to people, near or over built structures, or inside controlled airspace requires a Transport Canada Advanced Operations pilot certificate. That certificate needs a written exam, a flight review with a certified reviewer, and a drone registered for the operation being flown. Most residential buildings in Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley sit in exactly those conditions, so a basic certificate cannot legally cover the flight.
What changed in the 2025 Canadian drone regulations?
Transport Canada restructured the rules covering medium drones and lower risk operations, tightened registration and pilot certification, and clarified operating conditions near people. The practical effect is that certification and compliance matter more, not less, for anyone flying over occupied property.
Does a drone inspection replace a walk-through?
No. Aerial capture covers what cannot be safely reached: roof fields, upper envelope, parapets, flashings, and elevated drainage. Everything reachable is still inspected on foot. Both feed the same building record.
Do owners need to be notified before a flight?
Residents are told in advance of any scheduled aerial capture, and flights are planned so cameras face building assemblies, not windows or private outdoor space. The footage exists to document condition, nothing else.
Why levies land, and what makes them larger.
Large levies are rarely caused by one failure. They are caused by a condition nobody was tracking, discovered at the point where the only remaining option is expensive.
What actually causes a large special levy?
Almost always deferral. A slow envelope or drainage problem goes undocumented, damage spreads into assemblies that were never part of the original repair, and by the time it is visible the scope has multiplied. The levy is the cost of the delay, not the cost of the original defect.
How can a levy risk be spotted before buying into a building?
The record tells you. Look for repeating findings across years, repairs that were approved but never verified, missing documentation on major systems, and reserve funding that has not moved alongside known deficiencies. Those patterns show up long before a levy vote.
Can oversight actually reduce the size of a levy?
It changes when a problem is priced. Finding a failing assembly while it is still isolated means a scoped repair rather than a building wide restoration, and it gives decision-makers time to fund the work instead of borrowing against an emergency.
What role do building records play in a levy dispute?
A dated, photographed record of what was found and when is the difference between a defensible decision and an argument. Gaps in the record tend to become liability for whoever was responsible for keeping it.
What an inspection covers and how often.
Scope, cadence, and the difference between a one-time report and a record that keeps building on itself.
What does a building inspection cover?
Site and drainage, building envelope, windows and doors, balconies and decks, roof systems, drainage systems, mechanical and electrical, common areas, wood and susceptible materials, security and exterior integrity, and landscaping impact. Those are the systems where multi-family buildings most commonly deteriorate.
How is this different from a depreciation report?
A depreciation report models cost over a long horizon and is produced periodically. Oversight is continuous: quarterly documentation of actual condition, urgency assigned to each finding, and verification after work is completed. One informs funding, the other tracks what the building is doing right now.
How often should a building be inspected?
Quarterly, after an initial assessment establishes the baseline. Quarterly cadence catches seasonal patterns, coastal BC being the clearest example, where a wet season reveals drainage and envelope behaviour a single annual visit would miss.
Is planned inspection cheaper than reacting to failures?
Reactive work carries emergency pricing, rushed decisions, and scope that has already grown. Planned work is scheduled, quoted competitively, and sized to the actual defect.
What are the early signs of envelope failure?
Staining below windows and flashings, soft or discoloured cladding, pooling at grade, repeated interior humidity complaints on the same elevation, and sealant that has pulled away from joints. Individually they look cosmetic. Repeating in the same location, they are a pattern.
Does an inspection include fire and life safety?
Observed condition of life safety elements is documented and flagged, and anything requiring a certified fire protection contractor or engineer is referred out with the referral recorded. SENTiNEL documents and escalates, it does not certify.
Longer breakdowns of the same questions.
Each answer above draws on a full write-up. Read the whole set in the article library.
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