Strata Management

Strata management built for smaller communities

If your building is on the smaller side, you've probably felt it: the big firms treat you like a rounding error. Slow replies, a manager juggling forty buildings, and a council left to chase down answers on their own. That's the gap Onehive was built to fill.

We manage small and mid-sized strata corporations across British Columbia — the townhouse rows, low-rises, and mid-sized towers that deserve real attention. You get a manager who knows your building by name, not by file number. And you get technology that actually saves your council time instead of adding to the pile.

Here's what running your strata with us looks like.

What your council gets every month

Good strata management is mostly about doing the ordinary things reliably, on time, every month. That's where we focus.

• Monthly financials you can read — income, expenses, and reserve balances laid out plainly, ready for council review before every meeting.
• Council meetings and minutes — we prepare the agenda, keep the meeting on track, and get accurate minutes back to you quickly, not weeks later.
• Vendor coordination — sourcing quotes, scheduling work, and following up so a broken pump or a leaking roof doesn't become the council's second job.
• Bylaw guidance and enforcement — clear, consistent handling of complaints and violations, with fair notice and proper process.
• Insurance renewals — we manage the renewal timeline, gather what your broker needs, and flag coverage or deductible changes early so there are no surprises.
• AGM and SGM administration — notice packages, proxies, quorum, and voting handled correctly so your meetings hold up.
• Form B and Form F — turned around promptly so your owners' sales and refinancing don't stall waiting on paperwork.

Every one of these lands in your owner and council portals, so the current documents, financials, and maintenance tickets are always a login away.

Planning past next month: reserves and depreciation

The buildings that stay healthy are the ones that plan for the expensive years before they arrive. Roofs, envelopes, elevators, and plumbing all age on a schedule, and a strong contingency reserve fund is what keeps a special levy from landing on owners out of nowhere.

We help your council think ahead — coordinating depreciation reports, keeping them current, and using them to guide realistic reserve planning and contribution levels. British Columbia's Strata Property Act sets requirements around depreciation reports and reserve funding, and those rules have tightened in recent years. We keep your corporation aligned with its obligations and connect you with a qualified depreciation-report provider when it's time to commission or update one.

When a decision has legal or accounting weight — an unusual bylaw dispute, a complex funding question — we'll tell you plainly and point you to a strata lawyer or accountant. Straight answers beat guessing.

Why boutique makes the difference

Small and mid-sized communities don't need a bigger firm. They need a closer one.

Because we cap the buildings each manager carries and focus only on small and mid-sized communities, your emails get answered, your council isn't managing the manager, and problems get caught while they're still small. When something goes wrong at 2 a.m., our 24/7 emergency intake means a real coordinated response, not a voicemail box.

Our technology does the heavy lifting on the routine stuff. Owners pay online, find their forms and bylaws in a searchable library, and get instant answers from the Hive AI Assistant on fees, forms, and emergencies — day or night. That frees your manager to spend their time where it counts: on your building and your council.

Getting started is simple

Send us a note or give us a call and we'll walk you through it — no pressure, no jargon. We answer every proposal within one business day, and we'll give you an honest read on whether we're the right fit for your community.

Reach us at 778-386-2058, email info@onehivepm.com, or visit our office at 600-777 Hornby Street, Vancouver BC.

Switching to Onehive: how a transition actually runs

Most councils put off changing managers because the handover sounds worse than the problem. It usually isn't, provided someone sequences it properly.

The first thing to check is your existing agreement. Strata management contracts in BC generally require written notice, and the notice period — not your patience — sets the start date. We read the agreement with you before anything is signed, so the timeline is built around a date that actually works rather than one that triggers a penalty.

From there the work is records, money and vendors, in that order. Your outgoing manager is obliged to return the corporation's records, and we produce a specific list rather than accepting a box: bylaws and amendments as filed, two years of minutes, current financials and bank reconciliations, the depreciation report, insurance documents, contracts and warranties, and the owner and tenant registries. Funds move between trust accounts on a documented handover, with opening balances reconciled against the last statement your previous manager issued — this is the step that gets skipped, and the one that causes a missing month of bookkeeping six weeks later.

Vendors and utilities get notified of the change together, so nobody keeps invoicing an address that no longer reads the mail. Owners get one clear letter explaining what changes for them, which is mostly the payment method and where to log in.

The whole thing typically runs alongside your notice period rather than after it, so there is no gap in coverage. If you want the detail before you commit, we've written it up at length in how to change strata management company and when to switch strata management company.

What strata management costs, and what actually drives it

Management is usually quoted per unit per month, which makes proposals look comparable when they often aren't. Two things drive the real number.

The first is arithmetic. Every building carries a fixed amount of work no matter its size — one AGM, one budget, one insurance renewal, one set of financial statements. Spread across 12 units that fixed cost is a higher per-door rate than the same work spread across 120. A small building being quoted a low per-door rate should ask which of those fixed items has been moved into an extras schedule.

The second is scope. Full management, financial-only, and everything in between are all sold as "strata management". The gap between the cheapest quote and the next one up is frequently not a discount at all — it is Form B/F orders billed per order, meeting attendance billed per meeting, or a cap on the number of site visits. We publish an itemised quote for exactly this reason: the number at the bottom should be the number you pay.

We've written the comparison up properly in how much does strata management cost in BC and what the cheapest quote usually leaves out. If you are weighing us against another firm, read those first — they will make our proposal easier to interrogate, which is the point.

Frequently asked questions

What does a strata management company actually do? We handle the day-to-day for your strata corporation — trust accounting and budgets, bylaw enforcement, maintenance and contractor coordination, insurance and depreciation-report scheduling, and running council and general meetings — so your volunteer council isn't carrying it alone.

How much does strata management cost? Fees are usually quoted per unit per month and vary with building size and scope; smaller buildings pay a higher per-door rate because of fixed minimums. We give you a clear, itemized quote with no surprise add-ons.

How do we switch from our current manager? We handle the transition — records, funds and vendor handover — and coordinate the timing around your contract's notice period so nothing falls through the cracks.