No regulator sets or caps a property management fee on a capital project — which means the answer lives entirely in whatever your firm actually wrote into the management agreement.
Short answer
Neither the Condominium Act nor CAO’s guidance sets a rule for whether a management fee applies to capital work, so it’s governed by contract, not statute. What the corporation cannot skip is the reserve-fund governance process that surrounds the capital work itself — and any fee arrangement, favourable or not, has to be disclosed as a material contract if a status certificate is ever requested.
Ontario condo corporations run capital planning through the reserve-fund study cycle: a class 1 study within the first year of registration, then class 2 and class 3 studies alternating “at least every three years,” a “recommended funding plan projected over a period of at least 30 consecutive years,” a board review “within 120 days of receiving it,” and owner notice of any funding change “within 15 days” of the board proposing a plan — all under O. Reg. 48/01 s. 32 and Condominium Act ss. 37(1) and 94(8). None of that process language addresses who administers the work or what they’re paid for doing it; it governs how the money is planned for, not how the management relationship is priced.
Whether your firm bills a percentage on a capital project, a flat administration fee, or nothing extra beyond the base monthly rate is set entirely by the management agreement. CMRAO licenses individual managers and management companies and holds them to a Code of Ethics, but its licensing framework governs conduct and qualifications, not fee structure. That means an ambiguous contract — silent on whether capital work is in scope — is genuinely ambiguous, not defaulting to either side’s preferred reading.
A status certificate must disclose material contracts, including the property management agreement, precisely because “a long-term management contract — particularly one with unfavourable terms or a large termination penalty — can lock the corporation into a relationship that’s difficult and expensive to exit.” A capital-work fee that isn’t written down clearly is exactly the kind of term that surfaces at the worst possible time — during a resale, in front of a buyer’s lawyer. The same discipline applies to after-hours billing: price it in the contract before the work happens, not after. It also matters when the capital project itself involves choosing who does the work — see vendor selection across a portfolio for the due-diligence expectations that follow the money.
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