What Your Condo Corporation Maintains vs. What's Your Responsibility

A dishwasher hose fails on the fourth floor. Water finds its way through the subfloor and stains a ceiling on the third floor. Two owners, one property manager, and a repair bill nobody planned for, and the first question everyone asks is the same one: whose responsibility is this?

It's one of the most common sources of friction in condo living, and the honest answer is "it depends," but not arbitrarily. Ontario's Condominium Act sets a default framework, and your building's declaration fills in the specifics.

The default rule: corporation maintains common elements, you maintain your unit

Section 90 of the Condominium Act, 1998 requires the condo corporation to maintain the common elements: the building's structure, roof, exterior walls, hallways, elevators, and the shared mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems that serve more than one unit (Condominium Authority of Ontario; Ontario Condo Law Blog). Section 89 goes further, making the corporation generally responsible for repairing both units and common elements after most kinds of damage, which is why your condo fees fund a building insurance policy that covers more than just the shared spaces.

As the owner, you're generally responsible for maintaining what's inside your unit: interior finishes, appliances, fixtures, and anything you added above the unit's standard, builder-grade finish. That last category, upgraded flooring, custom cabinetry, a renovated bathroom, is treated as an "improvement or betterment." You're responsible for insuring and repairing it yourself, even though it sits inside a unit the corporation otherwise has obligations toward.

Why "it depends on your declaration" isn't a dodge

Here's the part that trips people up: the Condominium Act doesn't draw a single universal line between "unit" and "common element." It leaves your building's declaration, the founding legal document registered when the condo was created, to define those terms for your specific building (Cheadles LLP).

That matters most for spaces that feel private but are legally shared: balconies, terraces, and assigned parking spots. Section 91 of the Act lets a declaration designate these as "exclusive-use common elements," meaning you're the only one allowed to use the space, but the maintenance and repair obligation can be assigned differently than you'd expect, sometimes to the owner even though the space is technically still a common element the corporation owns.

Two condos in the same city, built by different developers, can genuinely have opposite answers to "who fixes my balcony door" because their declarations wrote the boundary differently. If you want a definitive answer for your own unit, the declaration (available from your property manager or in your status certificate, see our guide on what to check before buying a unit) is the actual source, not general advice like this article.

What to do when it's genuinely unclear

1. Ask your property manager to point to the specific clause, not just give you a verbal answer. Declarations are long, dense documents, but the relevant section for a specific fixture is usually short and locatable.
2. Check whether the item is an "improvement or betterment." If you or a prior owner upgraded it beyond the building's original standard finish, it's more likely your responsibility regardless of where it physically sits.
3. Ask what the corporation's maintenance record shows for that item. If the corporation has a dated history of servicing a shared system, that history matters when a dispute over cause (not just location) comes up.
4. Don't assume "in my unit" automatically means "my problem." Plumbing and electrical systems that serve multiple units often run through individual units without being that unit's responsibility.

How belo fits into this

belo doesn't decide who's responsible, your declaration and the Condominium Act do that. But most maintenance disputes aren't actually disputes about the law, they're disputes about facts: when something was last serviced, who did the work, and whether it was maintained properly before it failed. belo gives your property manager and board a continuous, dated record of every asset and vendor visit, so when a question like this comes up, there's an actual timeline to check instead of two people's competing memories of who said what.

If you're on a board or work with your property manager and want to see what that kind of record looks like, belo has a public demo built on a real reserve fund study.

This is general information, not legal advice. Maintenance and repair obligations vary by building and are ultimately governed by your specific declaration and by-laws. Confirm your building's actual rules with your property manager or condo counsel.