Dear Condo Smarts: Our company owns three corporate suites in a high-rise building in Vancouver. We have used them for housing employees who are transferred to the city for periods of three months to a year. The strata council has notified us that we have to apply to be able to rent them in accordance with the strata bylaws and that we must provide a Form K for tenants.
When we purchased the units, we were told by the real estate agent that as corporate owners, our units are not subject to the rental bylaws. Is that not the case? We can't seem to get a straightforward answer from anyone.
John, ACL Industries
Dear John: Employees of a company residing in a strata lot are tenants and not owners, and as a result, the strata bylaws do apply.
There are no special exemptions for corporate owners of residential strata lots, other than those that apply to all owners under the legislation or the strata corporation's bylaws.
The Strata Property Act and Regulations provide for three possible exemptions to strata bylaws that limit the number of rentals or prohibit rentals:
1) family members, as defined by the regulations are children or parents of an owner or owner's spouse.
2) hardship rental applications.
3) exemptions created by an owner developer's rental disclosure statement.
Family rentals would be a complicated and unlikely argument and hardship would require a specific application for an exemption. The likely exemption would be if the owner developer filed an RDS that applies to your strata lots.
The conditions are different, depending on when the statement was filed.
Rental-disclosure statements filed before Jan. 1, 2010, apply to the first purchaser for the period of time prescribed on the form, while rental-disclosure exemptions filed from Jan. 1, 2010, onward apply to the identified strata lots until the date of expiry on the form.
Whether your company is exempt from the bylaws depends on when your strata corporation was created and if you were the first purchaser. If an RDS exists, the strata corporation should be able to provide you with a copy, or you can contact the office of the superintendent of real estate to obtain a copy.
Even if you are exempt, anyone renting the strata lots must still provide a copy of a Form K, Tenant's Responsibilities, as required by section 146 of the act.
One other option to check is the registry of rentals. Family, hardship and RDS exemptions are not included in the count of strata lots being rented for the purpose of applying rental bylaws. They are simply added to the total number of units being rented on a Form B Information Certificate.
This requires the strata corporation to maintain active inventories of strata lots being rented and whether they are captured by the rental bylaw. The strata corporation must disclose, on the request of an owner or tenant, a list of names of tenants. This would obviously have to include whether the strata lot is exempt.
Tony Gioventu is executive director of the Condominium Home Owners' Association. Send questions to him c/o At Home, Times Colonist, 2621 Douglas St., Victoria, B.C. V8W 2N4 or email [email protected]. The association's website is www.choa.bc.ca.
