A strata can concede it collected too much money without becoming liable to repay every overcharge. In Rossum v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS1840, 2026 BCCRT 1477, the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal accepted that owners of a bare land strata lot had been paying twice the strata fees required by their unit entitlement. The dispute was how much of that long history could still be recovered.
The lot had been created when an earlier parcel was subdivided in 1997. Each of the resulting lots received a unit entitlement of 0.5, but the applicants paid fees calculated as though their lot's entitlement were 1 from the time they purchased it in 2007. They questioned the discrepancy after a 2017 meeting. In 2018, the strata manager incorrectly assured them the fees were right, referring to an unpaid equalization fee. The strata finally acknowledged the error in August 2024 and began billing the correct amount. The owners sought $9,961.60 for the historical overpayments.
The tribunal applied the ordinary two-year discoverability rules in BC's Limitation Act, which also govern CRT claims. It found the owners could reasonably have checked the land title unit-entitlement records themselves. The 2018 reassurance didn't change that due-diligence conclusion. Importantly, the tribunal treated each monthly overpayment as a fresh claim with its own discovery date, rather than treating the entire 17-year practice as one indivisible claim.
Because the owners applied to the CRT on November 15, 2024, payments before November 15, 2022 were outside the recoverable period. The evidence showed 23 later payments of $157.29, totalling $3,617.67. Half was excessive, so the tribunal ordered reimbursement of $1,808.84. The owners also pleaded unjust enrichment and significant unfairness, but those theories concerned the same underlying loss and did not avoid the limitation problem. The tribunal dismissed them without deciding their independent merits.
The fee decision adds another practical detail. The strata had offered $1,861.12 before the proceeding, more than the eventual principal award. Settlement communications would ordinarily be privileged, but no objection was taken to their admission, and the tribunal treated the privilege as waived. It considered the offer only when denying the owners reimbursement of their CRT filing fees, not when determining liability. The final payment order was $1,987.08, comprising $1,808.84 and $178.24 in prejudgment interest, payable within 21 days, with applicable postjudgment interest.
For strata councils, inaccurate fees should be corrected promptly, with unit entitlements checked against land title documents rather than informal historical practice. For owners, the decision shows why delay matters even where the accounting error is admitted. Its holding about monthly limitation periods is grounded in these strata fee facts, and it does not establish that misleading assurances can never affect discoverability in a different case.