White Rock sells condos, and most of its low-rise stock is decades old, so buying here is less about the suite than about the building. Two provincial strata deadlines land harder in this city than almost anywhere else in the Fraser Valley, and one of them falls before the end of this year.
What September actually looked like
These figures come from the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board's municipal market report for September 2026, which reports White Rock on its own, so this is city data rather than board-wide. The apartment benchmark price was $543,200, down 0.2 per cent from August and down 5.0 per cent from September 2025. There were 30 sales in the month, counting all property types, against 332 active listings. That is a ratio of 9 per cent, against the board's balanced range of 12 to 20 per cent, so a buyer here has time to read documents and ask questions. Two things cut the other way. Those 30 sales were up 11.1 per cent on September 2025, and active listings were down 12.1 per cent.
Sellers of a South Surrey or Langley house tend to treat the townhouse as the safer landing spot. On the last year of price data it was the more expensive one. The apartment benchmark fell 5.0 per cent over twelve months while the townhouse fell 19.7 per cent, and the townhouse still sits $177,600 above the apartment. In the board's September package the apartment is up 3.3 per cent over five years for the White Rock and South Surrey area, the only one of the three property types here with a positive five year number.
Why the building matters more than the suite
A depreciation report has to cover a defined list, and that list tells you what you are buying into. The Strata Property Regulation requires an on-site visual inspection and an estimated service life over 30 years for the structure, the exterior including roofs and windows, the building's systems, parking, utilities and interior finishes, plus at least three cash flow funding models for the contingency reserve fund over the same 30 years.
On a building in its forties or fifties, most of that list reaches the end of its first service life at roughly the same time. Whether the work has been funded or deferred is the biggest difference between two suites that look identical in a listing.
There is a test on the report itself. For any depreciation report obtained on or after July 1, 2025, the regulation names six designations that may write it, among them professional engineer, architect, applied science technologist and certified reserve planner. Before that date the standard was knowledge and expertise, with no credential attached. Check the date on the report and the designation beside the author's name.
The depreciation report deadline has already passed
A strata corporation with five or more lots must obtain a new depreciation report at least once every five years, and the annual three quarter vote that once let a strata defer one is gone. A strata established before July 1, 2024 that had not obtained a report since December 31, 2020 had to get one before July 1, 2026 in the Capital Regional District, the Fraser Valley Regional District or Metro Vancouver, and before July 1, 2027 everywhere else. White Rock is a Metro Vancouver member, so that deadline is nearly four months behind us, and so are Surrey, the City of Langley and the Township of Langley. No strata in this market got the later date.
That gives a buyer a clean test. Ask for the report. If a building of five or more lots has none, or the newest one predates 2021, that strata is offside a deadline that has passed. Two exceptions are legitimate: a corporation with fewer than five lots is exempt for as long as that holds, and a strata established between July 1, 2024 and July 1, 2027 has two years from its first annual general meeting, so a recently completed building may correctly have no report yet.
The next deadline is December 31
A strata corporation must obtain an electrical planning report by December 31, 2026 in those same three regional districts, and by December 31, 2028 in the rest of the province. You will see July 1, 2027 quoted for the rest of BC. That is the depreciation report date, not this one, and the two get mixed up constantly.
The exemption here is worded differently, and the difference matters. A strata escapes the requirement only if its plan had fewer than five lots on December 31, 2023, a fixed date. A strata established after December 31, 2023 gets five years from the deposit of its strata plan, so a 2025 building has until 2030, a far longer runway than the depreciation report allows a new building.
The report sets out the current capacity of the electrical system, the demands on it, peak demand and spare capacity, the capacity needed for future demands such as EV charging and heat pumps, and what the strata could practicably do to add capacity. There is a short form version. If every strata lot is supplied with electricity by a utility independently of the others, the report only has to state that fact and name its author. A townhouse row where each unit has its own meter gets two pages. A 1970s walk-up on a shared service gets the full capacity study.
Nine weeks is not much runway for a building that has not started. BC Hydro says the report may require monitoring energy demand over six to 12 months, and tells stratas not to wait until a month or two before the deadline. Peak demand figures come from the utility, and BC Hydro's load data request needs a site visit completed within the last 24 months and takes two to six weeks. The buildings to ask about are the ones that have not begun.
What you can demand, and what it costs
A buyer can request a Form B Information Certificate, and the strata has one week to provide it for a maximum of $35 plus up to 25 cents per page. Your offer does not have to be unconditional before you ask. The Act requires the rules, the current budget and the most recent depreciation report to be attached. The electrical planning report arrives by a different route: item (p) of the prescribed form asks whether the strata has obtained any, and copies attach if it has. Both reports are permanent records the strata can never discard.
For everything else, including minutes and the engineering reports behind the depreciation report, the strata has two weeks to answer a records request, one week for bylaws and rules. Copies cost at most 25 cents per page, and inspection is free.
Two numbers to run. The minimum annual contribution to the contingency reserve fund is 10 per cent of the budgeted operating fund contribution, so compare what the budget sets aside against that floor. And spending from the reserve to obtain either report, to do work the current depreciation report recommends, or to install EV charging needs only a majority vote rather than a three quarter vote. A strata that says it cannot afford the work is telling you about its reserve, not about the rules.
If you are thinking about it
Two things on price. The $543,200 benchmark is a composite for the whole city, not the price of an ocean view, so pricing a view takes recent sales in that building and the ones beside it. Borrowing costs have been steady: the Bank of Canada's target for the overnight rate has sat at 2.25 per cent since October 29, 2025, with the next announcement on October 28, 2026.
At a 9 per cent sales to active ratio there is room to do this properly. Request the Form B early rather than during a subject period, and read the depreciation report before you deal with subject removal in BC.
For the wider picture, start with White Rock real estate or South Surrey real estate, or read the South Surrey and White Rock market update for the full September figures. Both deadlines apply the same way to Langley real estate, so the same questions work on a Willoughby strata. If you are selling a house to buy a condo, what your home is worth is the first number to settle.
Sources
FVREB municipal market report, September 2026 data, for the White Rock figures, and the FVREB September 2026 statistics package for the five year index change and the balanced range. The Strata Property Act, the Strata Property Regulation and the prescribed Form B on BC Laws for every report, records, reserve fund and voting rule above. Province of BC strata housing pages and BC Hydro for the electrical planning report. Metro Vancouver for its member list. Bank of Canada for the rate.