The Condominium Register: What the Syndicate Must Keep

A co-owner asks for the minutes of a meeting held four years ago. A buyer wants to see the financial statements. A contractor needs the building plans before bidding. In a well-run syndicate, those three requests take ten minutes. Elsewhere, they set off a treasure hunt in a former director’s basement. The condominium register exists to prevent exactly that.

Two registers not to be confused

The word register covers two different things in condominiums, and the confusion is common.

The register the syndicate keeps for its co-owners

That is the one this article is about. It brings together the documents of the building’s life and stays accessible to the co-owners. Its contents are set by article 1070 of the Civil Code of Québec.

Nobody registers it anywhere. It lives in the syndicate’s files, physical or digital, under the responsibility of the board of directors.

Registration in the enterprise register

That is something else entirely. The syndicate is a legal person. As such, it must register in the Quebec enterprise register and keep its file up to date every year. That obligation is settled through the syndicate’s annual tax return and has nothing to do with the documents kept for the co-owners.

Remember only this: a syndicate in perfect standing in the enterprise register may well have no internal register at all, and the reverse is just as true.

What the condominium register must contain

Article 1070 lists the mandatory contents. The list is long and falls into four families.

People and decisions

First comes the name and mailing address of each co-owner. Other personal information, concerning a co-owner or another occupant of the immovable, may appear only if that person expressly consents to it.

This point changed recently. Earlier versions of article 1070 also named lessees. Since August 14, 2025, they no longer do. Many register templates still in circulation carry the old wording.

Next come the traces of decisions. The minutes of the general meetings of the co-owners and of the board meetings, first. Written resolutions, next. The by-laws of the immovable are added, along with all their successive amendments.

That last point deserves attention. The current version of the by-laws is not enough, the amendments matter too. A dispute over a rule adopted eight years ago is settled with the minutes of the meeting that voted it.

Financial and contractual documents

The register holds the syndicate’s financial statements, the declaration of co-ownership and copies of the contracts to which the syndicate is a party.

Contracts are what boards lose most. An elevator maintenance contract signed by a previous board, untraceable three years later, gets renegotiated blind.

Plans and technical documents

Into it go the cadastral plans, the plans and specifications of the immovable as built, and the certificates of location.

Since the new rules, the maintenance logbook and the contingency fund studies are added. These documents are no longer merely obligations to produce. They become parts of the register, to be kept and made available.

The description of the private portions

This is the newest family and the least known. The register must contain a description of the private portions precise enough to identify the improvements made to them.

The point is very concrete. After a loss, that description determines what falls under the syndicate’s insurance and what falls under the co-owner’s. Without it, the conversation with the insurer starts badly.

Who may consult the register

The co-owners’ right of access

Article 1070 does not say the syndicate keeps these documents. It says the syndicate keeps them at the disposal of the co-owners. That nuance carries the whole obligation.

A board that holds the documents but makes them hard to reach does not meet the text. Availability is part of the obligation, just as much as preservation.

For the documents produced under the new rules, a precise deadline now applies. As soon as those documents are produced, the board has 60 days to make them available to the co-owners.

The documents belong to the syndicate

Article 342 of the Civil Code sets the general rule for legal persons. The board keeps the list of members and the books needed for the proper functioning of the entity. Those documents belong to the legal person, and members have access to them.

In other words, the documents belong neither to the chair, nor to the manager, nor to the co-owner who gathered them. They belong to the syndicate. An outgoing director who keeps files at home is holding property that is not his.

The buyer and the notary

A prospective buyer is not a co-owner and therefore has no such right of access. In practice, the buyer goes through the seller, who is a co-owner, and through the notary.

Since the new rules, a more direct mechanism exists. The syndicate must give the seller an attestation on the state of the co-ownership within 15 days of the request. A syndicate whose register is in disarray will struggle to produce that attestation in time. It will then delay the sale of one of its own co-owners.

Keeping the register in practice

Paper or digital

Neither article 1070 nor the regulation adopted in 2025 imposes a format. The register may therefore be paper, digital, or both.

Digital wins for practical rather than legal reasons. A register hosted online survives moves, flooded basements and, above all, changes of directors. Do keep the signed originals that require it, starting with the declaration of co-ownership.

The handover between two boards

This is where registers die. A director leaves, takes the boxes along, and the next board starts from a blank page.

The fix fits on one line of the agenda of the first meeting after each election. Confirm that the register is complete and accessible to the new board. Two hours once a year save years of reconstruction.

What goes missing most often

Three categories disappear first. The minutes of board meetings, more often never written than lost. The contracts signed with suppliers. And the building plans, which nobody asks for until the day of major work.

They are also the three most expensive to reconstruct, when that is still possible.

What a syndicate without a register risks

No fine automatically strikes the careless syndicate. The consequences lie elsewhere, and they are concrete.

A board that cannot produce the minutes of a contested decision is left without proof. A syndicate unable to provide the attestation within 15 days blocks a co-owner’s sale, and that co-owner will remember it. A meeting that asks for documents and gets nothing turns on its directors. And a building whose plans have vanished pays twice. Once to redraw them, once for the delays their absence causes.

The register is not one more administrative obligation. It is the building’s memory, and the only thing that outlives the turnover of boards.

Conclusion

The condominium register comes down to a simple idea: everything that binds the building must stay available to those who own it.

Two steps are enough to start right. Take stock of what the syndicate actually holds, comparing it against the list in article 1070. Then decide where that register lives and who holds the key, before the next change of board rather than after.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Is a condominium register mandatory in Quebec?

Yes. Article 1070 of the Civil Code requires the syndicate to keep a register at the disposal of the co-owners. Article 342 further requires the directors of any legal person to keep the books needed for its proper functioning.

Can a co-owner demand to consult the documents?

Yes, that is the very meaning of the obligation: the syndicate keeps the register at their disposal. For documents produced under the new rules, the board has 60 days after they are produced to make them available.

Can the register be entirely digital?

Neither article 1070 nor the 2025 regulation imposes a format. Digital is therefore allowed and often preferable, keeping the signed originals that require it.

Must the register contain lessees’ contact information?

Not since August 14, 2025. Article 1070 now covers co-owners only. Other information about an occupant may appear only with that person’s express consent. Availability of the register, for its part, remains reserved to co-owners.

Within what time must the syndicate give a seller the attestation?

Fifteen days from the request. It is the shortest deadline weighing on a syndicate, and the one that exposes a badly kept register fastest.