Should you buy a Vancouver condo built in the 1990's?

There are many great reasons to buy a condo in an older building - larger rooms, no GST, lots of inventory. It is now 2023. Any condo built in the 1990's is now 23-33 years old and with age comes the end of the life span for many elements like roofs, windows and balconies, parking membranes, exterior cladding and more.

When you write an offer for a unit in a building from this decade, you have access to the strata documents which you absolutely should read. What should you be looking for? A newish Depreciation Report which is a 30 Year maintenance plan/guide to assist the strata owners in maintaining their building. In the minutes, specifically Annual General Meeting minutes, you want to see that maintenance projects are being voted on and not postponed continually. You may fall in love with a particular suite but you are also buying the building! 

As you may have heard, many of the Vancouver apartments built in the nineties were improperly built which resulted in leaky condos - water infiltrating into the exterior building envelope (walls and roofs). Many of the buildings have been repaired, at great cost to the owners, by way of a rainscreening process. When shopping for a home built in the nineties as well as the eighties, I would recommend looking for buildings already rainscreened. They are a better investment!