Form B

The Form B Information Certificate is the prescribed document through which a BC strata corporation formally discloses its state to a prospective buyer: the strata fees for the lot, any money owing on it, the contingency reserve fund balance, bylaw and rule amendments, agreements affecting the lot, and whether the corporation faces litigation or knows of coming special levies. Under the Strata Property Act it must be delivered within a week of request, at a regulated fee — and its statements bind the corporation, which is what separates it from gossip in the minutes.

What rides with it

The certificate arrives with attachments that are often more revealing than the form itself: the current budget, the rules, and — where one exists — the depreciation report projecting the building’s repair needs and their costs over the coming decades. Read together, they answer the buyer’s real questions. Is the reserve funded like a building that intends to fix its roof, or like one hoping the roof outlives the current owners? Are fees stable because the building is healthy or because levies do the heavy lifting? Is anyone suing anyone?

How it fits an offer

Most BC purchase offers on strata property are made subject to receipt and review of the Form B and related documents, with the condition window sized to the one-week delivery clock. The review is genuinely technical — reserve adequacy against a depreciation report is a judgment call — and seasoned agents pair the certificate with two years of meeting minutes, where the building’s actual conversations about leaks, levies and lawsuits live. A presale purchase has no Form B to review yet; the developer’s disclosure statement carries that weight instead, and the strata documents arrive with the building.

Why it deserves its reputation

BC’s housing stock includes a generation of buildings whose envelope problems taught the province, expensively, what underfunded corporations look like. The Form B regime is the paper immune system that grew out of that era: a binding snapshot, on a deadline, at a capped price, before commitment. Buyers who treat it as a formality are opting out of the one protection specifically designed for them — a theme our Vancouver home buyers guide returns to in the context of the full purchase timeline.