Certified insurable value evaluation (Bill 141)

An assessment of your building’s insurable value will provide you with an estimate of the cost to rebuild your building to new condition. This estimate ensures that your insurance coverage will adequately cover the entire cost of reconstruction in case of a disaster.

Responsibilities of Co-ownership Syndicates

Bill 141 mandates co-ownership syndicates to insure their buildings.

The co-ownership syndicate must obtain a replacement value insurance, meaning it should cover the actual cost of reconstruction. In other words, the insured amount must enable the complete reconstruction of the building in case of total loss. Its current depreciation has no impact in this context.

This amount must be determined by a member of the Quebec Order of Certified Appraisers and assessed at least every five years.

Items Covered

The insurance must cover common areas and private units (excluding improvements made to them). This policy will be under the syndicate’s name, which will be listed on the insurance policy. As for improvements made to private units by unit owners, each owner is responsible for protecting them through individual insurance, including improvements made by previous owners.

To identify what is covered by the syndicate and what should be covered by unit owners through their individual insurance, including improvements made by current and previous unit owners, a reference unit must be established.

Reference Unit

Syndicate obligations regarding the reference unit: “The syndicate must provide a sufficiently detailed description of private units so that improvements made by unit owners are identifiable. The same description may apply to multiple units if they share the same characteristics.” This description, acting as the reference unit, must be recorded in the co-ownership register so that requesting unit owners can consult it.

The reference unit is an inventory summarizing original finishings (excluding improvements made by current or previous unit owners) during the initial construction of the building. This document must be approved by the Board of Directors and ratified by the General Assembly.

All finishes purchased as options during the primary sale/purchase of the co-ownership project are considered improvements and must be excluded from the reference unit.

The reference unit pertains to finishings of private units and is not related to the area or the number of rooms in the units. That is, two units with different areas and different numbers of rooms but having identical or similar finishings will be described using the same reference unit.