Bare land strata in British Columbia

Bare land strata is the ownership form most likely to be misunderstood by everyone in the transaction, including people who have owned one for years. It looks like freehold — a house on a lot, a driveway, a garden, no shared walls — and it is governed like a condominium.

That gap between what it looks like and what it is produces a specific set of surprises, most of them about infrastructure and most of them expensive.

What actually defines a bare land strata lot

The definition is in the Strata Property Act itself, not in the regulation. A “bare land strata plan” is a strata plan on which the boundaries of the strata lots are defined on a horizontal plane by reference to survey markers, and not by reference to the floors, walls or ceilings of a building (s. 1(1)).

That one sentence is the whole thing. In a conventional strata, your lot is a volume of space inside a building, and the boundary usually runs through the middle of the structural portion of a wall, floor or ceiling (s. 68(1)). In a bare land strata, your lot is a piece of ground, surveyed and pegged, and the boundaries must be shown by survey markers in compliance with the rules made under the Land Surveyors Act (s. 68(4)).

Two consequences follow immediately.

A strata plan normally has to show the location of the buildings — except for a strata lot in a bare land strata plan (s. 244(1)(a)). The house is generally not on the plan. It is a structure you built, or someone built, on your piece of ground.

And a bare land strata plan cannot be deposited without the approval of an approving officer, who must not approve it unless it complies with the Bare Land Strata Regulations (s. 243). That approval process is where the servicing questions on this page were originally decided, decades ago in many cases, and the record of it is worth finding.

Unit entitlement also works differently: in a bare land strata it must be a whole number that is the same for every strata lot, or a number approved by the Superintendent of Real Estate (s. 246(6)). So strata fees are usually shared equally, regardless of lot size or house size.

The roads are common property, and that is the crux of it

Everything inside the plan that is not a strata lot is common property (s. 1(1)). In a bare land development, that characteristically means the internal roads, the shared parking, and the shared servicing infrastructure.

This is not an inference. The Bare Land Strata Regulations define an “access route” as “those portions of the common property in a bare land strata plan intended to provide vehicular access to the strata lots” (s. 1(1)), and require a bare land strata plan to provide such parking areas as the approving officer considers necessary, as common property or limited common property (s. 17).

So: the road outside your house is very likely owned collectively by the owners of the strata, as tenants in common, and maintained, repaved and eventually reconstructed at the strata’s expense — which is to say, at yours, in proportion to your unit entitlement.

Will the municipality take it over eventually? Nothing in the Strata Property Act or in the Bare Land Strata Regulations requires or provides a mechanism for a local government to assume internal access routes as public highway. The regulation’s structure runs the other way: land intended to become public highway is dedicated before approval, by registering a subdivision plan (ss. 8–10), and what remains inside the plan as an access route is common property by definition. The approving officer’s power is to refuse approval where access routes are insufficient for police and fire access (s. 6), not to commit the municipality to maintaining them.

A specific municipality could, in principle, take a road on through its own process. But “the city will take it over at some point” is a claim that needs a municipal source, and in the absence of one it should be treated as not true. Budget as though the road is permanently yours.

Water, sewage and drainage — decided at approval, inherited by you

The servicing rules in the Bare Land Strata Regulations are the most useful thing on this page, because they tell you exactly what questions to ask and what documents should exist.

Where the land would have had to connect to a public system had it been subdivided conventionally (s. 12), the approving officer must not approve the plan unless the connecting water, sewer or storm drainage mains have been built to the local bylaw standard, or the developer has posted security for them. And on-site (s. 13), the officer must be satisfied that a water distribution, sewage collection and drainage system serving all the strata lots can be built to code.

Where connection to a public system was not required (s. 13), the officer must be satisfied that each strata lot has an adequate proven source of potable water — or that a distribution system connects every lot to a single source — and either that a sewage disposal system meeting code can be built on each lot, or that a collection system connecting each lot to a common facility has been built.

Two further provisions do a lot of work in practice:

• Where a water source is off the property, rights of way or easements are required, and a licence under the Water Sustainability Act must be obtained before approval; regulated sewage discharge requires a provisional permit under the Environmental Management Act (s. 14).
• Where service pipes will run on or under a strata lot, approval cannot be given unless the developer has agreed in writing to register easements sufficient to allow the strata corporation to enter and install, repair, maintain or replace them (s. 15).

Section 13(5) also allows approval on the basis of covenants registrable under Land Title Act s. 182 where those servicing requirements are not otherwise met, and s. 13(6) allows reliance on a professional engineer’s certificate.

Translate that into what to ask for:

1. Does the strata own and operate a water system, a sewage system, or both? If it operates a shared water system serving more than one residence, that is a regulated water supply system with its own permitting and monitoring duties — see the wells and septic guide, because it is a materially different obligation from a private single-family well.
2. What does the depreciation report say those systems will cost, and when? Provincial guidance is explicit that bare land strata corporations are usually responsible for long-term repair and maintenance of bare land infrastructure — roads, water, electricity, sewage. A road and a water main are large, lumpy, unavoidable costs with no partial option.
3. Where are the easements for the service pipes, and are they registered?
4. Is there a s. 182 covenant on title recording a servicing condition that was never fully satisfied at approval?

Insurance: the trap

A strata corporation must insure the buildings shown on the strata plan. In a bare land strata, the houses are usually not shown on the strata plan.

The Act deals with this directly: the requirement to insure fixtures built or installed by the owner developer as part of original construction does not apply to a bare land strata plan (s. 149(3)), and an owner in a bare land strata plan may insure buildings or fixtures built on the strata lot (s. 161(2)).

So the practical division is usually:

• The strata corporation insures the common property and common assets — the clubhouse, the pump house, the water and sanitation systems, the common structures — and carries liability insurance with a statutory minimum of $2,000,000 (s. 150; Regulation s. 9.2).
• You insure your house.

That is close to how a freehold owner insures, and it is one of the few places where the bare land form is simpler rather than more complicated. But it is exactly backwards from what a buyer who has owned a conventional condo will assume, and assuming wrongly means being uninsured.

Check it against the actual strata policy and the actual bylaws rather than against this page, because the allocation can be varied and the strata plan governs.

Everything else in the Act still applies

A bare land strata is a strata corporation in full. All of the following apply in the ordinary way:

• Strata fees contributed to an operating fund and a contingency reserve fund (s. 92), apportioned by unit entitlement (s. 99) — which, in a bare land strata, is usually equal across all lots.
• A minimum annual CRF contribution of at least 10% of the budgeted operating fund contribution, in force since 1 November 2023 (Regulation s. 6.1).
• Special levies, by 3/4 vote where apportioned the ordinary way and by unanimous vote where apportioned any other way (s. 108(2)).
• Depreciation reports — five-year renewal interval, under-five-lots exemption, and the same deadlines as any other strata. For a bare land strata this is the most important document in the file, because the components being assessed are roads and buried infrastructure rather than a roof.
• Bylaws. A bare land strata can have bylaws about building form, siting, landscaping, fencing, RV and boat storage, and pets, and they are enforceable. This surprises people who bought expecting freehold latitude. One structural point: in a bare land strata plan, no bylaw amendment may be made before the second annual general meeting except by unanimous vote (s. 127(1)).
• Form B and Form F, on the same one-week timelines and the same capped fees — $35 plus up to 25 cents a page for Form B, $15 for Form F.
• The rental and age restriction rules, on the same footing as any other strata: rental restrictions are gone; age restrictions are limited to 55 or older.

One difference in the small print: the shelter easements that the Act provides between strata lots do not apply to bare land strata lots (s. 69(5)), which makes sense once you remember there is no shared building.

Financing and lender treatment

Lenders do not all treat bare land strata the same way, and this is the item most likely to derail a purchase late. A property that is legally a strata lot, physically a detached house, and served by a privately owned road and a privately owned water system does not fit neatly into a standard underwriting box.

This page does not assert what any particular lender will do — that is not something that can be sourced. What it does say is: settle it before you remove subjects, tell the lender specifically that it is a bare land strata, and tell them what the strata owns. Finding out afterwards is the expensive order.

What to read before you commit

The documents, in rough order of how much they will tell you:

• The depreciation report, in full, with attention to the roads, the water system, the sewage system and any dam, culvert or retaining structure.
• Two years of minutes, general meeting and council. Infrastructure arguments show up there long before they show up in a budget.
• The registered bylaws, not a summary, and not the rules.
• The budget and the CRF balance, read together with the depreciation report rather than on their own.
• The strata plan — to see what is a strata lot, what is common property, and what is limited common property.
• The title, plus the common property record, which is a separate search and is where a charge against the common property will show up.
• The insurance policy, to confirm what is and is not covered, and by whom.
• The approving officer’s file and the servicing covenants, if you can obtain them, for anything that was conditioned rather than completed at approval.

Bare land strata is not a worse form of ownership than freehold. For a lot of buyers in this region it is the only way to get a detached house at a given price in a given location, and a well-run one with a funded reserve and a current depreciation report is a perfectly sound purchase. But it is a form where the important facts are in the corporation’s records rather than in the house, and the cost of not reading them is not a surprise about a kitchen. It is a surprise about a road.

Related

• Strata and freehold ownership in BC
• Wells and septic systems — what to check
• Buying acreage near Victoria