Homeowners take strata company to court for charging too little on rent

A BC Civil Resolution Tribunal case may provide some insights as to why the situation with rent in parts of Canada is how it is after two homeowners took a strata company to court for charging too low an amount.

Based on the court documents, the homeowners hired a strata company to manage a rental property.

The pair then took the strata company to court on several claims including $3,330 for money paid to a tenant, $1,500 for lost rental income, and $290 as reimbursement for fees, changing locks and obtaining legal advice. The total claim amount from the applicants totalled $5,090, but the tribunal has a limit of $5,000 for a small claims case.

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Bayview, the strata company in question, denied breaching a contract or “any other wrongdoing.”

The homeowners and applicants in the court case were Shilpi Rao and Sanal Kumar Sukumaran, who had hired Bayview to rent out two suites.

In March 2021, Bayview found tenants for one of two vacant suites in the property owned by Rao and Sukumaran. The monthly rent was set at $2,200, and the agreement would kick in on April 1.

Bayview advised the owners of the rental agreement, and court documents suggest there was no prior consensus on an exact figure for the monthly rent. However, the contract between Bayview and the owners suggested that $2,220 was the minimum Bayview could charge.

Rao called a Bayview employee to complain that the rent charged was too low and below the market rate. The Bayview employee informed Rao that the agreement had already been signed.

Following this dispute, the rental agreement was terminated before the tenancy began.

Rao and Sukumaran also complained that Bayview breached the contract by allowing a husky, which violated a “small pets only” rule. However, the applicants had no documentation to prove this claim.

When looking over the case details, the tribunal member overseeing it suggested that Bayview was not obligated to charge the market rate for the rent due to a lack of explicit terms about it.

Based on the case details, Bayview abided by all the terms outlined in the contract.

The tribunal ended up dismissing the case and claims made by the homeowners.