Agent Masterclass: What Every Realtor Must Know About Condo & Strata Documents
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
Disclaimer: Everything shared in this Masterclass is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or professional advice specific to your situation.
Most realtors selling a condo know they need to review the strata documents. Fewer are fully prepared for what that actually means: potentially hundreds of pages—sometimes over a thousand—covering finances, legal disputes, building repairs, bylaws, and projected costs that could run into the tens of thousands of dollars for a buyer.
In British Columbia, reviewing these documents isn't optional. It's a professional obligation. And the gap between agents who understand them well and those who gloss over the details can have enormous consequences for their clients.
In this Agent Masterclass, AgentMarket sat down with Thomas Beattie, CEO of OctoAI and creator of Eli Report—the first automated condo document review tool in North America. With over 30,000 client reports delivered across more than 10,000 unique communities in Canada and the US, Thomas has reviewed more strata documents than virtually anyone in the industry.
What follows are the key insights every BC realtor should know.
📺 Watch the full Masterclass session below:
The Scale of the Problem: Why Condo & Strata Documents Are So Complex
Nearly a third of people in North America live in some form of multi-family, condo, townhouse, or HOA community. That means a significant portion of your transactions will involve a disclosure document set—and these are not light reading.
A typical condo document package in BC can include:
Form B (Information Certificate): A 1–5 page summary covering current fees, outstanding amounts, rentals, and key disclosures
AGM/SGM Meeting Minutes: At least two years of recorded community discussions—often the most revealing documents in the set
Bylaws and Rules: The lifestyle restrictions governing what owners can and can't do (short-term rentals, pets, renovations, etc.)
Budgets and Financial Statements: How the community has spent—and plans to spend—its money
Insurance Documents: What's covered, at what deductible, and how it compares to peer buildings
Depreciation Reports / Reserve Fund Studies: Engineering assessments of the building's major assets and projected future costs
Legal Disclosures: Tribunal cases, disputes between owners, or litigation involving contractors and developers
Engineering and Warranty Reports: Targeted assessments of specific building systems
That list adds up quickly. Thomas noted that while a 1,000-page document set isn't common, several hundred pages is the norm. Before tools like Eli Report existed, working through all of it manually took agents several hours—and even then, they often lacked the context to know what they were actually looking at.
The Hidden Cost of Condo Ownership: What Your Buyers Need to Understand
One of the most valuable contributions Thomas and the Eli Report team make is reframing how agents and clients think about condo costs. Most buyers focus on the monthly strata fee shown in the listing. That number tells only part of the story.
Monthly fees reflect the operating budget plus reserve contributions—but in BC, those reserve contributions are often dangerously low.
Here's what the data shows:
The average condo fee in BC now exceeds $500/month (up from just over $400 in 2021)
In Ontario, the average is over $800/month
Why the gap? Ontario requires buildings to be adequately funded for future projects. BC's requirements are tied only to the operating budget.
The result: Ontario strata buildings contribute roughly 40% of their operating budget toward reserve funds. BC buildings contribute only 15–17%. That chronic underfunding has a direct consequence: special levies.
Thomas estimates that approximately $1 billion per year in special levies is assessed across BC strata properties. These are one-time charges to owners—above and beyond monthly fees—to cover major capital projects that the reserve fund can't absorb.
And it's not evenly distributed. Buildings constructed in the 1990s are currently facing the highest projected levies, because they're now at the age where expensive long-life assets—roofs, building envelopes, plumbing systems, elevators, parking structures—are due for replacement. These major components typically have a 30–40 year lifespan, and for 1990s buildings, that clock is running out.
For your clients: A buyer purchasing a condo in a 1990s building without understanding the reserve fund situation could be looking at a five-figure special levy within years of closing.
What Eli Report Does (and Why It Matters for Your Practice)
Eli Report was built to transform the condo document review process. Here's how it works in practice:
Upload the documents → Receive a structured report in minutes.
For buildings already in the Eli system, the turnaround can be under five minutes. For new buildings, expect 20–25 minutes. Either way, it's a fraction of the time required for a manual review. The report organizes information into clear, actionable sections:
Special Levy Forecasts
Thomas considers this the most valuable section of any Eli Report. It shows the timing and magnitude of projected special levies based on the building's latest depreciation report, reserve fund balance, and budget contributions. The forecast won't be perfectly precise—engineers aren't working with a crystal ball—but it's the best available estimate of what's coming and when.
If a building has significant levies forecasted in the near term, that information belongs in the negotiation conversation. Buyers need to plan for it. Sellers' agents need to be upfront about it.
Bylaws and Lifestyle Restrictions
This section flags rules that may directly affect a buyer's lifestyle or investment plans—short-term rental prohibitions, pet restrictions, renovation limitations, and more. These aren't abstract legal clauses; they're the day-to-day reality of living in or renting out that unit.
Financial Health Benchmarks
Eli Report doesn't just present the numbers—it compares them to peer buildings of similar type and age. Is this building's repair and maintenance budget above or below average? Are its management fees in line with the market? Is the reserve fund contribution healthy relative to comparable communities?
Context is everything. A reserve fund balance that looks adequate in isolation may be critically low compared to what similar buildings are holding.
Insurance Analysis
Insurance deductibles and premiums can signal a building's claim history and risk profile. Earthquake deductibles have risen significantly across BC in recent years—now typically 10–20% compared to 5–10% just a few years ago. High premiums relative to peers may indicate a history of claims. Below-average water and flood deductibles can signal a building that has managed its systems well.
Meeting Minutes Analysis
Two years of AGM and SGM minutes contain the community's living history—ongoing issues, disputed repairs, management challenges, owner conflicts. Eli Report organizes these chronologically and flags the most significant items, allowing agents to quickly identify recurring concerns rather than combing through hundreds of pages of meeting transcripts.
Legal Matters and Engineering Reports
LLMs are well-suited to summarizing complex legal language. Eli Report uses this capability to extract the key implications from tribunal decisions, litigation disclosures, and engineering assessments—documents that are often impenetrable to non-specialists but contain critical information for buyers and their agents.
Using Eli Report in Your Client Relationships
Beyond the analysis itself, the tool is designed to facilitate better client conversations—on both sides of a transaction.
As a buyer's agent, you can share the report directly with your clients through Eli's system and track when it's been opened and reviewed. This is particularly valuable given BC's obligation to ensure clients have actually engaged with disclosure documents—not just received them.
As a listing agent, running an Eli Report before going to market gives you a transparent picture of what buyers will find in due diligence. Rather than letting potential issues surface as surprises after an offer is made, you can address them proactively with your seller, set appropriate pricing expectations, and build trust with the other side by sharing the report at or after an open house.
As Thomas put it: "Doing it upfront provides clarity so that buyers can present an offer that is more likely to stick than one placed on a unit where the disclosure documents indicate problems."
That transparency is good for sellers too. It reduces the chance of a deal collapsing during subject removal and helps both parties reach a negotiated position grounded in reality.
The Red Flags to Know Before You Advise
After reviewing documents on more than 10,000 communities, Thomas has seen the patterns. A few specific areas warrant extra vigilance:
Plumbing systems. Certain materials—Poly-B and KiTec piping in particular—are known to fail catastrophically and are still present in many BC buildings. A building with ongoing pinhole leaks, frequent insurance claims, or a plumbing replacement scheduled years out (but clearly overdue) represents material risk for a buyer.
Reserve fund contributions relative to balance. If both the contribution rate and the balance are low, the building is underfunded and underfunding simultaneously. That's a compounding problem that will eventually result in a significant levy.
High insurance deductibles or premiums. Elevated costs relative to peers often indicate prior losses. A building with repeated water damage claims may be in a high-risk insurance category—meaning future claims could be costly for individual owners.
Meeting minutes that reveal unresolved issues. Recurring mentions of the same problem across multiple years of minutes—a leak that keeps appearing, an elevator that keeps failing, a contractor dispute that hasn't resolved—are worth noting and discussing with your client.
The Bottom Line for Your Practice
Reviewing strata documents isn't a compliance checkbox. It's one of the most direct ways you demonstrate professional value to your clients.
Buyers are trusting you to help them understand not just what a condo costs today, but what it may cost them over the coming years. Sellers deserve an agent who can prepare them for the questions that will come up in due diligence—rather than being blindsided by them.
Tools like Eli Report exist to make that job more manageable, more accurate, and more useful to the clients relying on your expertise.
Continue Your Learning
Watch Thomas Beattie's full Masterclass session above for a live walkthrough of an Eli Report, including the special levy forecasting tool, financial benchmarks, and the bylaw analysis features. You can also explore Eli Report's resources and podcast at elireport.com.
Watch for AgentMarket's next Agent Masterclass coming soon.
Want to stand out from the competition? Join AgentMarket to showcase your expertise to motivated buyers and sellers who are actively comparing agents. Learn more at agentmarket.ca/agents.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, real estate, or investment advice. The content is general in nature and should not be relied upon as a substitute for consulting with qualified professionals.
