Renting Out Common Property: Storage, Parking and Caretaker Suites

Extra parking stalls, an unused storage room, a caretaker suite sitting empty — these look like easy revenue for a strata corporation. Some of them are. But strata common property rental sits at the intersection of several rules in the Strata Property Act, and the right answer usually depends on what the strata plan shows and what your own registered bylaws say.

First, figure out what you actually have

Before a council discusses money, it needs to know what the asset is:

• Common property — the part of the land and buildings shown on the strata plan that is not part of a strata lot, as defined in s.1 of the Act.
• Limited common property (LCP) — common property designated for the exclusive use of one or more strata lots. LCP is still common property; exclusive use is not ownership.
• A common asset — personal property held by the strata, or land held in the strata's name that is not shown on the strata plan or is shown as a strata lot (a caretaker suite often falls here).
• Part of a strata lot — in which case it is not the strata's to rent at all.

A parking stall can be any of these. Form B asks the strata to say which, stall by stall, including whether a common-property stall was allocated with council approval and whether it is rented, and at what monthly amount (Form B, Strata Property Regulation). Form B also warns that allocation of a common-property stall may be limited as short-term exclusive use and may therefore change in future — so a council should not promise an owner a stall forever.

Parking and storage: user fees, not open-ended deals

Where the strata charges for the use of common property or common assets, the charge is a user fee, and the Regulation is specific about when one is permitted. Under s.6.9 of the Strata Property Regulation, a user fee may be imposed only if the amount is reasonable and the fee is set out in a bylaw, or in a rule that has been ratified by the owners. The amount can be fixed or calculated on a reasonable basis — consumption, recovery of operating or maintenance costs, number of users, or duration of use.

Two practical consequences:

• A council cannot simply resolve at a council meeting to start charging $75 a month for storage cages. The fee needs a bylaw or a ratified rule behind it. If you are unclear on which instrument you need, see Strata Bylaws vs Rules in BC.
• Long-term or exclusive arrangements can start to look less like a user fee and more like a disposition of common property. Disposing of common property in a way not covered by the land title route requires a 3/4 vote at an annual or special general meeting, plus the consents and certificate described in s.80. Where a proposed lease is long or grants near-permanent rights, that line is worth a lawyer's opinion before signing.

Q&A: the questions councils actually ask

Can we rent parking stalls to people who don't live in the building?
The Act does not address this directly. It depends on your registered bylaws, on insurance and security considerations, and on whether the arrangement amounts to a disposition under s.80. Many stratas restrict outside users by bylaw; some municipalities also regulate commercial parking. Treat it as a bylaw and legal question, not a council discretion question.

Can we just designate the stalls as limited common property and charge for them?
No — those are different tools. Designating common property as LCP by resolution requires a 3/4 vote and the resolution has no effect until it is filed in the land title office with a sketch plan (s.74). A designation made that way can only be removed by another 3/4 vote, also effective on filing (s.75). If the LCP was designated by the owner developer or by a strata plan amendment, removal requires amending the plan, which takes a unanimous vote (s.257). Designating LCP gives exclusive use away; it does not create rental income.

Why do some owners pay for the parkade and others don't?
Under s.6.4 of the Regulation, an operating-fund contribution that relates to and benefits only limited common property is shared only by the owners entitled to use that LCP, using an LCP-weighted formula. Contingency reserve fund contributions and special levies are still calculated on total unit entitlement. Sections have their own parallel formulas in s.11.2.

Who decided the original stalls?
Possibly the owner developer. Before the first AGM, an owner developer may amend the strata plan to designate parking stalls as LCP, including a limited number of extra stalls, without an owners' resolution (s.258).

Caretaker suites: the strata becomes a landlord

If the suite is a strata lot owned by the corporation, the strata is the owner and landlord when it rents it out. That carries the same obligations any landlord has under s.146: before renting a residential strata lot, give the prospective tenant the current bylaws and rules and a Notice of Tenant's Responsibilities in the prescribed form (Form K), and within 2 weeks of renting, give the strata corporation a copy of the notice signed by the tenant. Failing to do so does not release the tenant from the bylaws, but it lets the tenant end the tenancy within 90 days of learning of the failure, with moving expenses up to one month's rent payable by the landlord.

Bylaw enforcement against that tenant also has its own rule: under s.131, a fine or remediation cost levied against a tenant may be collected from the tenant, the landlord and the owner — but not more than the total amount once.

Whether a caretaker suite tenancy also engages employment law or residential tenancy law depends on the arrangement, and that is worth professional advice rather than a template agreement.

Keep the paper trail

Rental income belongs to the corporation, flows through the budget owners approve by majority vote, and shows up in the books of account. Record the authority for every arrangement: the bylaw or ratified rule setting the fee, the resolution if a vote was required, and the council decision allocating the stall. Clean AGM minutes are what a future council — or a purchaser's lawyer reading your Form B — will rely on. If you are reconstructing years of parking history from scanned documents, tools like SearchStrata can use AI to surface where a stall was last discussed.

Self-managed councils carry this filing burden themselves; see How to Self-Manage a Strata in BC. Whether you self-manage or work with a property manager, the point of a system like ManageStrata is that the management company can change but the strata's knowledge shouldn't — the parking allocations, votes and minutes belong to the corporation.

This article is general information about BC strata law, not legal advice; verify against the current Strata Property Act and Regulation or consult a BC strata lawyer.