Multiplex Types

How many homes in the building should you look for

Buyers usually pick a format first and then look for homes, which is backwards. The number of homes in a building is not a feature you experience directly. What you experience is how much space you have, how much you hear your neighbours, how big your share of a repair bill is, and how easy it is to get a decision made.

This page works from those four things back to a format, so you can narrow the search without ruling out a home that would have suited you.

The short version

  • Fewer homes means more space and a larger share of every bill. More homes means the reverse.
  • Two owners have no majority. Three or more do, which changes how disputes resolve.
  • Private outdoor space attached to your own home gets rarer as the count rises.
  • There is no published benchmark comparing multiplex formats on price or resale, so decide on fit rather than on a forecast.
  • Shortlist by what your household needs, then look at whatever formats contain homes that match.

Start with space, because it is the hardest to change

A lot divided twice gives you two large homes. The same lot divided six times gives you six smaller ones. That is the most reliable generalisation in this whole subject, and it is where the search should start.

Write down what you actually need: bedrooms, a work space, somewhere for a parent to stay, storage for the things that live in a garage. Then compare stated floor areas rather than formats. A generous fourplex home can be larger than a mean half duplex, and the format label will not tell you that.

Be honest about storage in particular. It is the thing households consistently underestimate and the thing that makes a home feel too small within a year of moving in.

Then think about the bill you cannot predict

Every building eventually needs something expensive. The question is what share of it you carry and whether the money is already set aside.

In a duplex you carry half. In an eightplex you carry an eighth. If a large unexpected cost would be genuinely difficult for your household, that arithmetic should weigh heavily, and it is the best argument for a larger building.

That said, the share is only half of the equation. A well run strata with a funded contingency and a current depreciation report is a safer purchase in any format than a badly run one with more homes in it. Ask for the depreciation report, the contingency fund balance and two years of minutes for every building you seriously consider, and compare those rather than counting doors.

  • How much of a sudden repair bill could your household absorb?
  • Does the building have a current depreciation report?
  • What is in the contingency fund compared with what the report expects?
  • Has any large repair been agreed but not yet paid for?
  • How many owners live in the building rather than letting their home?

Then how you want decisions to work

In a two home strata there is no majority. If you and your neighbour disagree, there is no third vote to settle it, and that is the single biggest structural risk of a duplex.

Three or more homes gives you a majority for ordinary decisions, with the Strata Property Act setting higher thresholds for certain matters. Six or eight homes gives you a strata that runs on written processes: notices, agendas, minutes and votes. That formality feels bureaucratic when everybody agrees and protects you when they do not.

Which suits you is partly temperament. Some people would rather sort things out over the fence and find meetings tiresome. Others want a paper trail. Both are legitimate, and it is worth knowing which one you are before you buy into a two home building.

Finally, privacy and outdoor space

Fewer homes generally means fewer people passing your windows, more chance of private outdoor space attached to your own home, and a shorter shared route from the street to your door.

As the count rises, outdoor space is more likely to be shared, entrances are more likely to be reached through a common path or corridor, and there are simply more households moving around the building. None of that is bad, and for some buyers the busier feel is a positive. It is simply different, and it is difficult to judge from photographs.

If private outdoor space is important to you, say so early and let it filter the search. It rules out a good deal of what is on the market and saves you viewing homes that were never going to work.

A shortlist that works

Take the four points above and turn them into a short list of requirements, in order: the space you need, the repair share you can absorb, the kind of strata you want to be part of, and whether outdoor space must be your own.

Then search on the requirements rather than on the format. Our type pages exist so you can see what is currently available in each, and the neighbourhood pages let you start from location instead. Most buyers find that two or three formats contain homes that meet their list, which is a better position than having ruled out five of them on the basis of a word.

One thing we would not do is choose a format because of what you expect it to be worth later. No published benchmark tracks multiplex prices by format in Greater Vancouver, so any such comparison is somebody's estimate. Buy the home that fits your household, in an area you want to live in, from a building whose finances you have read.

If you are buying with another household, add one more requirement to the list: whether the building contains two homes that both families can live with. That is a harder constraint than it sounds, because it means two sets of needs have to be met in the same building at the same time, and in a three or four home building there may only be one home that suits either of you.

Give yourself permission to view homes in formats you had discounted. Buyers regularly tell us they were looking for a half duplex and bought a fourplex home, or came in wanting the smallest possible strata and chose a sixplex because the specific home was better. The list of requirements is what matters; the label is a filter, and a coarse one.

Set a budget for the strata fee as well as for the mortgage, and treat it as a fixed cost rather than an afterthought. Two homes at the same asking price can differ by a meaningful amount each month once the fee is included, and over a decade that difference is real money. It is also the number most likely to rise, since it follows what the building actually costs to maintain.

Take the strata documents seriously in every format. We would rather buy into an eight home building with a current depreciation report and a funded contingency than into a duplex where nobody has looked at the roof in a decade. Good governance is worth more than any structural preference on this page, and it is the one thing you can actually check before you commit.

Allow yourself to view homes in formats you had discounted. Buyers regularly tell us they came looking for a half duplex and bought into a fourplex, or wanted the smallest possible strata and chose a sixplex because that particular home was simply better. The requirement list is what matters. The format is a filter, and a coarse one, and it should never be the reason you did not view the home that would have suited you.

If you are buying alongside another household, add one more requirement: whether a single building contains two homes that both families can live with. That is harder than it sounds, since two sets of needs must be met in the same building at the same time, and in a three or four home building there may be only one home that suits either of you.

And take the strata documents seriously in every format. We would rather buy a home in an eight home building with a current depreciation report and a funded contingency than a home in a duplex where nobody has looked at the roof in a decade. Good governance is worth more than any structural preference on this page.

Questions buyers ask

Work from what you experience rather than from the label: how much space you need, how large a share of a repair bill you could absorb, how formal you want the strata to be, and whether outdoor space must be attached to your own home. Those four answers usually leave two or three formats in play rather than one.
As a general rule, the fewer homes a building is divided into, the larger each one is, so half duplexes tend to be the largest and homes in six or eight home buildings the smallest. It is only a tendency, since lot size and layout vary, so compare stated floor areas of the specific homes rather than relying on the format.
It is the main structural risk of a two home strata: with no third owner, a disagreement about a necessary repair has no internal route to a majority. The practical protection is buying into a building whose depreciation report is current and whose contingency fund is healthy, so the expensive decisions are already funded rather than pending.
No. More homes means each share of a bill is smaller, but larger buildings usually have more shared property to maintain, which raises the bill before it is divided. We have seen sixplexes with lower fees than fourplexes and sixplexes with higher ones, so compare actual budgets rather than reasoning from the number of homes.
There is no published benchmark tracking multiplex prices by format in Greater Vancouver, so any comparison of resale performance between formats is an estimate rather than a measured figure. Buy the home that fits your household in an area you want to live in, and judge the specific building on its finances and condition.
Read two years of minutes, the current budget, the contingency fund balance and the depreciation report. Together they show what the building has to maintain, what it plans to spend, whether the money exists and how the owners handle disagreement. A seller who is slow to produce those documents has answered part of the question already.
You are buying a single strata home rather than a whole building, so lenders assess it as a residential purchase in the usual way. What a lender may look at is the strata's financial health, since a building with a large planned repair and no money set aside can affect their view. Ask your lender early if a building's finances look weak.
Ruling out a format usually removes homes that would have suited you, since a generous fourplex home can be larger than a small half duplex. Rule out requirements instead: too few bedrooms, no step-free access, no private outdoor space. That filters the search on what matters and leaves the label to sort itself out.
Smaller stratas are more personal, which is pleasant when the owners get along and uncomfortable when they do not, since there is nowhere to be anonymous. Larger stratas run on written processes that feel bureaucratic when everybody agrees and protect you when they do not. Neither is friendlier in general; they fail in different ways.
Private outdoor space attached to your own home is most common in duplexes and side by side arrangements, and gets rarer as the number of homes rises, where shared gardens and balconies are more usual. The strata plan shows exactly what belongs to each home, so read it rather than judging from photographs.
That single requirement usually settles the choice, because in most buildings only the ground floor homes offer a flat route from the street. Check the whole path from the kerb to the bed, including the threshold and any internal steps, and treat it as a fixed requirement rather than something to compromise on later.
Start from the neighbourhood and the requirements rather than from the format. Our city and neighbourhood pages show what is available in each area, and the type pages let you see each format on its own. Most households find that two or three formats contain homes that meet their list, which is a better position than ruling out five.

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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.

  1. Strata Property Act, SBC 1998, c. 43. BC Laws, Queen's Printer for British Columbia. Accessed 29 August 2026.
  2. Greater Vancouver MLS® Home Price Index. Canadian Real Estate Association and Greater Vancouver REALTORS. July 2026 report, accessed 29 August 2026.

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