Addressing Building Strata

The Regional District of Nanaimo (RDN) plans for the location, amount and type of residential development through its Official Community Plans (OCP) and zoning bylaw. Within the OCPs and zonings bylaws, this planning occurs through identifying minimum parcel size for subdivision of residential parcels and the number of dwellings permitted per parcel.

In Rural Residential areas, the RDN typically allows land to be subdivided into 2.0-hectare parcels (4.94 acres). Where the parcel is greater than 2.0 hectares, a parcel may have two dwellings. A practice on some properties has been to register these two permitted dwellings as a strata, which has become referred to as a building strata.

While building strata tenure provides an opportunity to subdivide where the land does not comply with minimum parcel size for subdivision in zoning, the form of building strata subdivision is based subdivision of buildings rather than land. The consequences for property owners of this form of subdivision can create uncertainty with respect to zoning, liability, insurance, legislation, health and safety.

As an alternative to building strata, the RDN is undertaking a project to consider changes to Rural Residential areas in OCPs and zoning to establish a 1.0-hectare minimum parcel size and one dwelling per parcel. This change will enable existing owners within a two dwelling building strata the ability to formerly subdivide the property to create separate parcels of land and will provide an alternative to the creation of future building strata.