Selling a Strata Unit in BC: Documents, Timing and the Delays That Cost You
The seller's side of a strata sale is mostly paperwork on a clock. What you have to provide, who orders it, and where completions actually get held up.
Buying advice for stratas is everywhere. Selling advice is thinner, which is odd, because the seller carries most of the paperwork risk and nearly all of the timing risk. A strata sale is a normal real estate transaction with a small bureaucracy bolted to it, and the bureaucracy runs on its own schedule.
Start before you list
Order your document package early. Buyers will ask for two years of minutes, the current budget and financials, the depreciation report, the insurance summary, the registered bylaws and the strata plan. Assembling that after an offer arrives compresses your subject period for no reason.
Reading it yourself first is worth an hour. If there's a levy under discussion, an insurance deductible that's tripled, or an engineering report in progress, you want to know how you'll answer the question — not hear it for the first time from a buyer's agent. Nothing kills a deal faster than a seller who appears to be discovering their own building's problems.
Form B: the information certificate
A Form B Information Certificate is the strata corporation's statement of where things stand for your lot: the monthly fee, any amounts owing, whether a special levy has been approved, the contingency reserve balance, parking and storage allocations, whether the corporation is party to any legal proceedings, and more. It comes with the bylaws and rules, the current budget and financial statement, and the insurance summary attached.
You request it from the strata corporation — in practice, from the strata manager. The corporation is required to provide it within a defined period after a proper request and payment of the permitted fee, and the certificate is binding on the corporation in favour of the person relying on it. That last point is why buyers' lawyers insist on a recent one.
The practical advice is simple: order it as soon as you have an accepted offer, not the week before completion. A fresh Form B has a shelf life in a buyer's lawyer's eyes, but ordering late is the more common mistake by a wide margin. There's more detail in what is a Form B Information Certificate.
Form F: the certificate of payment
The Form F Certificate of Payment is the one that actually gates your completion. Title cannot transfer without it. It certifies that you don't owe the strata corporation money — or that any amount owing is being dealt with in an approved way.
So if you're in arrears on strata fees, carrying an unpaid fine, or holding an outstanding special levy instalment, that has to be resolved before the corporation will issue the Form F. This is not a formality that can be argued with on completion day; it is a hard stop. If you know you owe something, deal with it when you accept the offer.
The difference between the two forms trips people up constantly — Form B vs Form F sets them side by side.
Where sales actually get delayed
Late document orders. The single most common cause. The corporation has a statutory window to respond, and a manager who receives the request four days before completion is not obliged to work miracles.
Outstanding amounts. Fines, chargebacks, an unpaid levy instalment, or an insurance deductible charged back after a claim. Any of these blocks the Form F.
Unapproved alterations. If a previous renovation touched common property without the corporation's written approval, it can surface during the sale as a demand for an alteration agreement or restoration. This is worth checking before you list if any work was done.
A levy approved between offer and completion. Who bears an approved special levy is a matter for the contract, and it is worth having your lawyer address it explicitly rather than assuming.
Rental and pet questions. Post-Bill 44 a strata can no longer restrict rentals generally, but short-term rental bylaws and pet bylaws still bind, and a buyer discovering one late will renegotiate. See renting out your strata unit after Bill 44.
What a good manager does for a seller
Honestly: turns the paperwork around quickly and answers the phone. Form B and Form F requests are one of the clearest places where management quality is visible to an owner, because the cost of a slow turnaround lands directly on you as a delayed or collapsed completion. It's one of the reasons we treat them as a priority queue rather than routine correspondence.
If your building is chronically slow on documents, that is a fixable problem and a reasonable thing for owners to raise at the AGM. See measuring the value of strata management.
Frequently asked questions
Who pays for the Form B and Form F? The seller usually bears the cost of providing the documents a buyer requires, though it's ultimately a matter for the contract. The corporation may charge the fee permitted under the regulations.
How long does the strata have to provide a Form B? The Strata Property Act sets a response period after a proper request and payment. In practice most managers turn them around well inside it — but order early rather than testing the deadline.
Can I sell if I owe strata fees? You can list and accept an offer, but the corporation will not issue the Form F Certificate of Payment while money is owing, and completion cannot proceed without it. Clear the balance early.
This article is general information for BC strata owners — not legal advice. Your conveyancing lawyer or notary should review the contract and the strata documents for your specific sale.
Written by
Onehive Property Management manages strata corporations and rental properties across British Columbia. Our guides are written by the people who do the work — council meetings, budgets, insurance renewals and all — and reviewed against the Strata Property Act before publishing.