Utilities and Heating in a Multiplex Home | MultiLiving

The practical rule is simple: before you compare two strata fees, find out what each one includes. A fee that looks lower can simply be a fee that excludes something you will pay separately.

The short version

Electricity is almost always metered to each home and paid by the owner.
Water, garbage collection and sometimes heating are often paid by the strata and included in your fee.
New multiplex homes are usually metered separately for each home, which makes costs predictable.
Compare fees only after you know what each building includes.
How you heat the home matters more to the bill than the size of the home in many cases.

What is usually yours and what is usually shared

Electricity is nearly always metered to your own home and billed to you directly. Internet and any television service are yours. Gas, where a home uses it, is normally metered to the home as well.

Water, sewer and garbage are commonly billed to the property as a whole and paid by the strata corporation from the operating fund, which means they arrive inside your monthly fee rather than as a separate bill. That is why two similar homes can have different fees for reasons that have nothing to do with how well the building is run.

Heating varies most. In many new multiplex homes each home has its own system and its own bill. In others there is shared equipment, and the cost of running it sits in the strata budget. Both arrangements are normal, and the difference shows up in the fee rather than in your inbox.

Ask for the strata budget and read the expense lines. It will tell you exactly which utilities the building pays, which is a much better answer than asking the seller.

Pay attention to hot water in particular. In some new homes it is produced by equipment inside the home and appears on your own bill, and in others it comes from a shared system and sits in the strata fee. That single difference can be worth a noticeable amount each month, and it is invisible unless you ask.

Where each utility usually sits

Utility	Usually paid by	Ask about
Electricity	You, metered to your home	Whether any shared lighting is on your meter
Gas	You, where the home uses it	Whether heating or hot water is gas
Water and sewer	Often the strata, inside your fee	Whether it is in the budget or billed separately
Garbage and recycling	Often the strata	Whether collection is municipal or private
Heating	Either, depending on the building	Whether the home has its own system
Internet	You	Which providers actually serve the building

General patterns to guide your questions. The strata budget for a specific building is what settles it, and you can ask for it before you buy.

Comparing two homes properly

Take the strata fee for each home and write next to it what the fee includes. Then add the utilities you would pay separately in each case. Only then are the two numbers comparable.

We have seen buyers choose a home because the fee was lower, and then pay more overall because water and heating were excluded. The fee is not a measure of how expensive a building is to live in; it is a measure of what has been pooled.

Do the same exercise for the things that are not utilities at all. A building with a shared garden pays for its upkeep from the fee. A building where each home has its own patch does not, and the cost lands on the household instead. Neither is better. They are just accounted for differently.

The same applies to snow clearing, gutter cleaning, window cleaning and pest control. In a building where the strata arranges them, they are in your fee. In a building where each owner deals with their own, they are your problem and your money, and they do not appear in any comparison you make between two fees.

Write the two lists out side by side rather than holding them in your head. Buyers who do this regularly find the cheaper looking home is the more expensive one, and it takes fifteen minutes with two strata budgets open.

What actually moves your bill

Three things, in roughly this order: how you heat the home, how many people live there, and how the home is built.

Heating is the largest single item in most Greater Vancouver homes over a year, and the difference between systems is significant. Ask what the home uses and what it costs to run, and ask a current owner if you can, since a seller's estimate and a resident's bill are different things.

Household size drives hot water and everything else that follows from having people at home. A household of four uses considerably more than a household of one in the same home, which is worth remembering when you are comparing a neighbour's bill to your own expected use.

A brand new home generally performs better than an older one of the same size, which is one of the genuine advantages of buying new. We are not going to put a percentage on that, because the honest answer depends on the specific homes being compared and we have no published figure for multiplex homes to point you at.

Setting up, and the first year

Arrange your accounts before completion rather than after. Electricity and internet in particular can take days to connect, and a household moving in on a Friday with no power has a memorable weekend.

Read the meters on the day you take possession and keep a note. It settles any question about what you owe from before you arrived, and it takes thirty seconds.

Expect your first year to be higher than you predicted. A new home takes some getting used to, thermostats get left where the previous setting was, and households tend to run heating harder in the first winter while they work out how the home behaves. This is normal and it settles.

Finally, if your building shares any utility, ask how it is apportioned between the homes. Somebody has to do that calculation and somebody has to check it, and in a small strata that somebody is one of the owners.

One habit worth forming in the first year: note your consumption each month somewhere you will still have it. After twelve months you have a baseline for your own home, which is far more useful than any general figure and lets you spot a problem early. A sudden rise in water use, for instance, is often the first sign of a leak that nobody has seen yet.

It is also the record that makes the next conversation with your strata easier. If the building shares a utility and the apportionment looks wrong, a year of your own readings turns an argument about impressions into a discussion about figures, and figures get resolved much faster.

Do not forget the small recurring services that feel like utilities and are not: a security or monitoring subscription, a hot water tank rental if the home has one, or any service the previous owner had arranged. Ask what is in place, and what transfers with the home, before completion rather than discovering a subscription three months later.

For a brand new home, ask what is already connected and what you have to arrange yourself. New buildings sometimes come with accounts set up in the name of the company that built them, which then have to be transferred rather than opened, and the transfer is a different process with a different timeline. Ask the question a fortnight before completion.

And check what the building itself uses. Shared lighting, a shared entry system, an irrigation system for a common garden and any shared equipment all consume something, and all of it appears in the strata budget. Reading those lines tells you how the fee is likely to move as prices change, which is more useful than the current figure alone.

None of that takes long, and it turns the fee from a number somebody quoted you into a figure you understand.

Questions buyers ask

Some are and some are not, and it varies between buildings. Water, sewer and garbage are commonly paid by the strata from the operating fund and therefore sit inside your fee, while electricity is nearly always metered to your own home. Ask for the strata budget, which lists exactly which utilities the building pays.

Write down what each fee includes before comparing the numbers. Then add the utilities you would pay separately in each case. A lower fee often simply excludes something you will pay elsewhere, so the comparison is only meaningful once both sides cover the same list of costs.

It depends on how the building is set up. In many new multiplex homes each home has its own heating system and its own bill, while in others shared equipment is run from the strata budget. Both arrangements are normal, and the difference shows up in the size of the fee rather than in a separate bill.

A brand new home generally performs better than an older home of the same size, which is one of the real advantages of buying new. We will not put a percentage on it, because the honest answer depends on the two specific homes and there is no published figure for multiplex homes we could cite for a general claim.

Lighting on common property is a common expense of the strata corporation, so it is paid from the operating fund and reaches you through your strata fee. Occasionally a shared light is wired to one home's meter by mistake, which is worth asking about, since it quietly puts a building cost on one household.

Arrange the accounts a couple of weeks before completion rather than after, because electricity and internet can take days to connect. Read the meters on the day you take possession and keep a note of the figures, which settles any question about consumption before you arrived and takes almost no time.

New homes take some learning. Thermostats get left at whatever setting they arrived on, and households usually run heating harder through the first winter while they work out how the home behaves. It generally settles in the second year, so treat the first twelve months as a high estimate rather than a permanent baseline.

Somebody has to apportion the cost between the homes and somebody has to check the arithmetic, and in a small strata that person is one of the owners. Ask how the split is calculated and how often it is reviewed, because an arrangement nobody has looked at in years is usually an arrangement that has drifted.

Not always. How the home is heated and how many people live in it often matter more than floor area, so a well built larger home can cost less to run than a poorly built smaller one. Compare the actual arrangement rather than assuming size decides it, and ask a current resident if you can.

Ask, and treat the answer as an estimate rather than a measurement, since a seller's recollection and an actual bill are different things. Better still, ask whether they can show you a year of bills. For a brand new home nobody has that history, so look at what comparable homes cost to run instead.

Which providers serve a building depends on what has been connected to it, and in a new multiplex that is worth checking rather than assuming. Ask which services are actually available at the address rather than in the neighbourhood, because the two are not always the same and it is awkward to discover after moving in.

It depends on the home and on what the fee includes rather than on the format. A multiplex home usually has more exterior wall than an apartment surrounded by other homes, which can mean more heating, while apartment buildings often pool more costs into the fee. Compare the total of fee plus separate bills for each specific home.

Also worth reading

Strata fees for multiplexes

Where these numbers come from

Every figure on this page comes from the body that issues it. Rules and rates change, so each entry says when we checked it.

Strata Property Act, SBC 1998, c. 43, Part 6 (Finances), sections 91 to 94. BC Laws, Queen's Printer for British Columbia. Act current to 25 August 2026, accessed 29 August 2026.

Want this checked against a real home?

Send us the address or the project name. We will look at what is actually on offer, tell you what the numbers on this page work out to for that home, and say so if it is a poor fit.

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Utilities in a multiplex home: what you pay and what the fee covers