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okay welcome everyone today's topic is going to be the top 10 tips for keeping your strata insurance premiums low

or i should just call it as low as possible you all know

that strata doesn't really you know the insurance doesn't seem to

although it's dipped a little bit in the last couple of

years it doesn't really seem to go uh too far backwards it always kind of goes up, but it is really important.

It is generally for most strategies going to be your number one expense item and, uh, anything that you can do to,

uh, you know, still replace, still keep it at full replacement costs, but to keep it as low as possible is a very good thing.

Um, so that's the topic for today.

We're going to have about a 15 to probably about a 15 minute presentation

and then if you guys have any questions maybe I'd ask just save them to the end

and you can fire away we're going to leave you know

45 minutes for Q &A doesn't have to be pertaining to

what we're talking about today the strata insurance it can be about anything strata related

if you guys have more private stuff

that you don't want to maybe share with the group in the context then we can, you know, take that offline and that's just fine too.

So I'm going to get things going here. So who am I?

My name is Chris Stepchuk.

I'm the CEO and managing broker for Fort Park Property Management and Real Estate.

Of course, you guys all know that.

And what we do, we guide strata councils with clarity, confidence, and care, specializing in strata management,

residential, commercial, and light industrial since 2008.

One thing we like to say, effective strata management isn't just about maintaining properties, it's about building trust through clear communication,

proactive solutions, and consistent support.

So let's get into the meat and potatoes of it, the top 10 tips, and then we're going to throw in a bonus one there at the end as well.

So first one is your depreciation report.

So insurance companies have always kind of asked for these.

It depends on the exact insurer and it depends on the situation with your particular strata.

But now that they're going to be mandatory, they're going to be asking for these a lot more because before you could just say, well, we don't have one.

But that's going to be very difficult to do moving forward.

If you don't have one, then it raises red flags.

Why don't you have one when they're now mandatory?

So it may look like you're trying to hide something if you don't get one.

So of course, everyone here in the lower mainland needs to have one by the end of July of next year.

And it's just a good planning tool for you regardless.

Next thing is your roof maintenance.

So insurance companies really don't like water ingress a lot of them won't pay for for water ingress claims

if it's due to a lack of maintenance or things like

that they'll deny the claim

so you don't want to ever be in a situation where you're not able to have a claim

if you do get a significant amount of damage

so keep on top of your roof maintenance have it done you know every year at least every couple years.

Get someone up there for peace of mind, you know, just making sure there's no pooling water, making sure there's no clogged drains or anything like that.

No leaks, you know, it needs to be re -caulked

and the flashings and the cappings and all that stuff need to be re -caulked every few years.

So you can get a report on that and you can supply

that to your insurance company and make sure then they will know that you guys are right on top of, of that.

And when I say roof maintenance, you know, roofs are typically where we see a lot of water ingress and damage,

but that can be windows and other things as well.

It doesn't have to be just for the roof, right?

Any kind, anything, you know, whether it's your membrane or windows or doors, anything where there's a ceiling and they can, they can potentially water can get in.

Number three is update your bylaws.

So we've got a number of bylaws that I've seen over time and the strata insurers do ask periodically about these things.

They don't always, but sometimes they do.

And they'll ask things like, is smoking allowed inside the suites or in common property um you know

if you don't allow smoking there's a lesser chance of fire of course

a lot of the fires are started by someone smoking and

and you know ashing in the garbage can or just on a couch

or something like that uh no barbecues on patios

or balconies i'm not saying you have to have that bylaw

but again that's something that they sometimes ask for um regular replacement schedule for hot water tanks

so do you have a bylaw

that says people need to get their hot water tank replaced every 10 years uh

if there are in sweet hot water tanks those things can cause a huge amount of damage uh

if they rust out in the bottom and um

and they they're not near a drain

and we've seen you know just there's a lot of water in there

and it can go down two or three floors

and cause a lot of damage not just to the suite that it happens in but to the suites below

use of stainless uh braided hoses so this is another one

that you can have a bylaw or at least a rule um

or sorry you can't have a rule it'd have to be a bylaw

because it's it's a straddle lot thing uh making people change from those rubber hoses that crack

and do leak uh to stainless steel braided hoses for the washing machine uh ban on short -term rentals

so this is something that they're sometimes asking about um we haven't seen

that a lot but i have seen it come up every now

and again you know if the if the strata is being used more as a hotel type use than a

than a typical long -term residence they are interested in

that uh and garburetors is another one garburetors can cause a lot of damage for backups sewer backups

and we see some stratas put in bylaws saying that when they do eventually fail,

that they have to be replaced with just conventional piping, no garburetors.

Number four is sprinklers.

So this is another huge area that we see claims on.

If a sprinkler goes off, it can be related to fire, but not necessarily.

Someone can just break the thing and it goes off

or it's defective we had one yesterday in one of our buildings it's actually a new building

and the sprinkler there was some malfunction

and it caused a huge amount of damage

so it doesn't take long for sprinklers to cause a lot of damage

so get them checked regularly

if they're getting older maybe they need to be changed out it is expensive to do

but they should be part of your annual um fire inspection

which leads me into uh number five which is fire inspection

so this is a good one um of course i'm sure

most of you get an annual fire inspection done this is

fire part of the the fire code depending on the municipality you're in

um both in suite common property fire extinguishers hoses smoke detectors sprinkler heads fire hydrants

and backup batteries things like that so if there was a fire

and of course you're going to have when there's a catastrophic loss from fire you've got a lot of parties involved

and doing inspections and things like that

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and figuring out the cause of the fire and

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if it's due to faulty equipment because you didn't do your fire inspection

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um there may be the potential for your claim not to be honored which would be absolutely horrible

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uh number six is obtain three quotes so even

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if you've been with the same insurance company for for many

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years um that's fine you can stick with them it's like you can change around

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but it never hurts to obtain competitive quotes uh just keeps everyone honest and you know like I said,

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for most buildings, this is going to be your number one expense item.

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So going out there, getting a couple extra quotes isn't going to hurt.

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It is a little bit of extra work, but it's, you know, if you get a 10 % reduction in a, on a hundred thousand dollar insurance premium, that's a significant amount of money.

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And rates are, you know, there's more like five years ago, you couldn't really do that.

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You were lucky just to get one quote

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and you were lucky just to get insurance

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but the market has softened up quite a bit now um

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as the prices have gone up it's more profitable for the insurers to be doing property insurance again

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so you may get some competitive quotes now uh deductibles

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so this is something you can play around with a little bit um

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and we've done that before where we've had buildings that have increased their their deductibles uh particularly water,

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and that can bring your premium down.

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It doesn't always make a huge difference, but it can definitely make a difference.

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So something worth looking at if you're trying to reduce your premium, maybe you take your water deductible from $25 ,000 to $100 ,000.

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It does create potential for other issues, and the owners would probably want to make sure that you get their buy -in to do something like that,

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but it can save you guys some money, a significant amount.

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uh earthquake deductible so this is another thing uh falls in the deductible category

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so you can manipulate your um earthquake deductible usually with most

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insurance companies from the standard uh 10 you can go to 15

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or even 20 you can even reduce it a little bit

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which isn't going to help your premium but um that's something

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that you can play around with uh

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if you're trying to get your premiums down

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and you can even do it for one year you don't have to do it on a on a

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you know annual basis you can maybe do it for one year if you're trying to save a little bit

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electrical so this is something that is obviously insurance companies are looking at

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you want to make sure that your electrical system is is in top tip -top shape

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if it's an older thing it hasn't been inspected for a

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while it might be worth if you've got some reasons to believe

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that it might not pass certain inspections

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if you've got anything like old aluminum wiring or knob

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and tube or 60 amp boxes this is not going to go over well with the insurers

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they may never even know that you have this

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if they don't ask the question but if there was a claim

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and then something happened you'd be darn sure that they could find out

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and would find out so

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if you think you've got any of those old um you know aluminum

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or knob and tube is quite old you don't see

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that much in any modern buildings

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but we do see it from time to time our 60 amp boxes just make sure

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that you guys are getting those upgraded

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number 10 is plumbing so kind of like electrical this is something

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that insurance companies will ask about from time to time they don't always

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but again if you had an issue due to one of these systems then they may deny the claim

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so uh you know we see copper copper piping can be a huge problem here um

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if you haven't had it replaced

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and you're getting pinhole leaks it might make sense to do

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that it can be very expensive to um to redo the whole whole service line system in your building

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but if you're continually having insurance claims

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because of it then it's probably worth it you know it

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can range from i don't know we've done lots of these

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from 200 000 up to 500 thousand depends on the size

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of your building uh any uh pecs uh you want to retrofit with pecs the plastic

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and make sure you get rid of any poly b that's hanging around

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and insurers definitely ask about poly b and they don't like it

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and i know a lot of stratas still have that

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in common areas as well as in suites

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so it's a very good idea to get ahead of the curve don't wait for something to happen, get that replaced, and then you don't have to worry about it.

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And the very last one that we've got for today is stay claims free.

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So avoid the tendency to make claims whenever possible.

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If it's, you know, around your deductible.

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Sometimes it might be worth just paying it out of pocket rather than opening a claim.

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Of course, if it exceeds your deductible, the damage by a significant amount, you don't really have a choice.

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But if you have a judgment call to make and you think

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that it might be easier just to pay for it yourselves, then that might be easier.

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And then you don't have to worry about opening a claim

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and then that goes on your record

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and then every time you're trying to get a quote people are looking at

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that so that's definitely something that I see stratas try to do

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when they can and when it makes sense and and I think it's definitely worthwhile to try and do that

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and so to summarize uh we've got depreciation report get it done uh roof maintenance make sure you're getting

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that done on a on a If not an annual basis, get it done every couple of years, get a report done, update your bylaws to be insurance friendly,

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sprinklers, get them maintained and get them inspected.

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If they're getting to be that kind of, you know, they'll be identified in your deficiency and your depreciation report.

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If they're starting to get to the end of their, of their service life, fire inspection, get it done every year,

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obtain three quotes whenever it makes sense for your insurance look at your deductibles, see if you can put them up a little bit,

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earthquake deductible, service your electrical and your plumbing, make sure they're up to date and everything looks good there.

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Sometimes even on electrical and plumbing, the insurer, if they have any reason to believe there's something fishy, they may even ask for a report from a licensed contractor.

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And then stay claims free.

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I think that's one of the absolute biggest ones that we can say.

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so that's um that's it for today for the presentation

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and i'm going to open it up to any questions

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that you guys might have again it doesn't have to be

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specifically for this topic can be about anything uh anything at all yes

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uh yeah okay uh i have a general one uh are

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you going to send this uh powerpoint presentation to us i've been taking notes

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but it uh can you forward this yes we will we'll also we'll send this

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and we'll also send out a link uh to the video

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so you guys can okay watch

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that on our youtube channel okay my second question has to do with electrical

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so we have a system throughout the entire entire building um

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what responsibility is there as an uh an individual owner uh

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around electrical stuff in my own unit um how do i know

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if it's my responsibility or if it's a strata responsibility

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if something goes wrong well you know usually the strata

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because the electrical system is is tied into a system for the whole building we would usually say

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that the strata would would take care of the um of the electrical type stuff now

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if it's just a breaker or something simple maybe you can have the owners do

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that themselves but i would generally guide most stratas that

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that electrical is a um you know it is a it's

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a an integrated component kind of like sprinkler systems right

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if you look at sprinklers like a sprinkler head is in

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your individual strata lot right it's within the boundaries of your strata lot but it's tied into the overall system

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and therefore should be taken care of by the strata electrical is kind of the same

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if you're using too much you only have

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so much power to your whole building that's shared so

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if you haven't upgraded it and then a bunch of people are using evs

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and now your panel is blowing all the time

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because you're building enough power then it has to be you

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know it has to be a common property a strata solution rather than just one unit okay

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and that's part of the reason

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that the eprs are becoming are going to be mandatory for this upcoming year is just

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so so that the strata kind of is in charge of

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that and looking at you know if everyone's putting in heat pumps

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or electric vehicle chargers

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or rather than it just each individual doing something on their

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own the whole the whole building is doing it yep thank you Raul how are you doing yeah hey good

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I have a question about you were talking about the the

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water tanks the hot water things um in the building you

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know we have just uh two of them for the whole

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building there's no individual ones in those cases we need to let the insurance know

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that we don't have any in in the building except on the the underground parking

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or yeah so so in the case where you have a boiler

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and hot water tank system and and no individual hot water tanks

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which is most most no i shouldn't say

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but a lot of uh a lot of apartment style stratas have

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that set up um you know that's really up to the strata corporation just to make sure

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that that you guys are maintaining that

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and you're you're doing the regular maintenance on it

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and replacing them whenever they need to be replaced the insurance

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company might ask about it uh i mean they're going to

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see uh in the depreciation report they're going to see

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if it's if it's past its serviceable life or not and they may ask you to replace it, but it's not as concerning if it's in the parkade.

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um than it is

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if it's on the fourth floor of a building where it's going to cause like major damage you know

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if it if they go in a parkade we just had one actually

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that happened in one of our buildings too

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and it's you know it most of the water just went

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into the drain it wasn't really major damage um okay

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and sorry just a quick second question uh about the number 11

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or the bonus one

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that you were talking about stay claims free uh in our case of course

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because we're mixed strata with the commercial and having

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so many uh issues uh in that relationship

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and having all this you know legal uh issues with with the commercial um

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that we can't avoid staying free as in you know having to claim for you know lawyers guidance

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and blah blah uh in those cases it's unavoidable i'm guessing yeah yeah it's not

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so when i say stay place free it's only

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if you can avoid opening a claim

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and you know in your instance i don't think you really

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have a choice there um in a lot of businesses maybe you have like a $25 ,000 water deductible

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and the emergency restoration company comes in there

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and says it's going to be $26 ,000 right um

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so therefore you have to open a claim

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and they're just trying to push it over that that limit um

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so but maybe maybe it does it isn't over $26 ,000 maybe you can get

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that down to $24 ,000 and and do the work yourselves

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so it's only where it's very close um you know maybe

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you need a second quote on the restoration company just to make sure

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that you don't have to open a claim

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because sometimes you just you know it's really close

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and you just don't have to yeah okay thank you so much yep uh sonia

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uh go ahead sonia i think you're muted oh you're on mute there oh yeah this is me

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uh maybe i'll go to joan here hi there uh can you hear me Am I muted?

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No. No, you're good.

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You're on mute.

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Okay.

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Can you talk a little bit about the liability that's involved when you have water damage from an upstairs suite?

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Because the rules, as I understand them, I don't agree with them.

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But I think in most cases,

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a lot of people who are responsible do pay for any damage that they caused just a week below.

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But according to the notes with the insurance company,

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it sounds like they don't have to do that. Am I misunderstanding it?

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Well, this is a really, really tricky one.

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I mean, we could have a probably a two hour webinar just on on who's at fault during water, water leaks and things like that.

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And and it's a very complicated subject.

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There's a lot of gray area and there's a lot of, you know, depends on the circumstances.

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But generally speaking, without going into kind of any specific details, each strata lot, if it's not a common property thing,

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each strata lot is responsible for the repairs to their own suite

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so you know if there's a toilet from the third floor

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that leaks uh and it leaks into the second floor

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and there's no real common property that's damaged it's just the

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the two floors then the third floor opens a claim uh with their insurance company uh

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if there's what if there's damage and

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and then the second floor uh unit would open a claim

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with their insurance company to fix the the in suite damage

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and then those two companies insurance companies usually kind of battle

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it out uh to subrogate who's going to be responsible for paying what um

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and that's that's kind of the general you know rule of thumb it's not

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if it's not over the deductible the strata doesn't normally get involved

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and uh so

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that you know that's kind of the rule even though it

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might all would not make sense you would think well three should have to pay for for two's damage

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but that's not necessarily the case.

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Yeah, that's the way I understand it.

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But if it's $500, it shouldn't go to insurance.

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So I think the person upstairs should pay, but they don't always.

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That's right.

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And it's hard to sometimes get them to pay, right?

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And it's, you know, unfortunately, the second floor in this example has to open an insurance claim.

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And their insurer would try to subrogate against the third floor unit.

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gets complicated it does it can get really complicated

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but that's the misconception is that the the one causing the damage is the one

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that pays for everything below and that's not always the case

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because each under the strata act each each strata lot is

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responsible for their own uh damage to their own suite like repairs to their own suite

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thanks way yeah no problem i can see here sonia uh question what do you do

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if your strata manager won't source more than one or two quotes and then another one uh let's see here

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so if your strata manager won't source more more than one

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or two quotes well i would i would try to uh nicely ask them to go out there

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and get more than one or two quotes i mean there's no reason

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that you know five years ago or even maybe three

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or four years ago you couldn't necessarily get more than one quote uh

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because the market was so tight

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that uh it just wasn't possible now in certain cases uh

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if it depends who's back end insuring your your particular policy

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they may be sharing like uh the same like maybe lloyds of london is on both

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if bfl is using them and hub is using them

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and then one will one of the brokerages may refuse to go out

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and get a quote just because they're they're using the same insurer

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so that does happen quite a bit um where they just can't get you more than one quote uh

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but it doesn't mean you can't try to get to get multiple quotes OK,

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I'm just going to close the chat here.

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Tony.

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Sorry, just going to unmute it first.

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Since you're on topic of options, so I hear BFL hub.

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So who else do you recommend?

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And I think of Westland as well.

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So you got any other recommendations?

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Yeah, there's, you know what, there's, before there wasn't a lot of guys.

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It was a little bit tricky, but there's quite a few that can do it now, right?

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There's, we see one, there's Waypoint is quite aggressive in the market right now.

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There's Acera, or what are they called now?

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Acera Capri,

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CMW, used to be CMW, Acera um there's chill there's westland there's uh

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and then there's lots of smaller brokers out there too you

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know for your complex you probably have to go with one of the bigger ones but

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um you know there's there's uh intact um yeah there's there's probably even you know half a dozen at least

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that could it could quote on your particular building no i don't know this is a rumors

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or this is true

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if you get too many causes is there any disadvantage maybe

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you get too many people going out there trying to source it

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and therefore you can actually do a disservice for you in terms of premium i don't really think

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so i mean i think

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that uh you might you might run into the case where

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they've already opened like say say bfl is using a certain back -end insurer

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and then you go out and ask Waypoint for a quote and they're also using that insurer.

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So you just wouldn't be able to get that quote.

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But it's not like your premium is going to go up.

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It's just, it's not like when you're applying for a mortgage

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and you start applying at too many places and it affects your credit score.

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Like I don't really see that.

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Okay, thanks Chris.

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Yep.

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any other questions guys oh here's a good one another one from Sonia our council members able to some brokers

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or providers don't seem to deal with non strata professionals like volunteers Well, I mean, some brokers may,

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I can't really speak to that because I've never really been in that scenario,

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but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to go out and get quotes if you're on council.

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I mean, they may not want just owners going out there and getting quotes, but I don't see why someone from council couldn't go and get quotes.

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I mean, in a lot of scenarios, council, you know, in a lot of buildings that we manage, that's what council does.

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Like, we only maybe manage their financials or something like that.

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So that would be a role.

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Maybe the president does it or the treasurer or something.

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So I don't see any issues with that.

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anything else anyone to do with insurance or

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uh tony you had another one yeah sorry since i always talk about cost

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because i'm i'm money sensitive so

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so i i you know strata we always think the best way to reduce costs is group group everything together

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so therefore you get more leverage in terms of uh getting quotes

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and stuff like that either for landscaping

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or whatever we've been trying to uh get a few stratas

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here together uh for one company to do six stratas within this because you you've got lower overheads right?

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Because you got a company who comes in here and does the area with six, seven, eight stratas.

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Okay.

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That's also a strategic way of reducing costs.

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Can we do that with insurance with your assistance and go out there and say, give me an example.

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Okay.

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I'm a property management CEO here.

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So therefore I got a total of 100 buildings. So

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if I give you all the business i recommend uh to

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hub say to hub can you give me a discount for all 100 unit 100 stratas

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it's a good question it's it's yes and no is kind of the answer

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so in in your instance uh in your example for landscaping it totally makes sense right

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because they have to drive there once instead of driving back

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and forth and wasting that time to pay their guys for commuting

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and for gas so it really makes sense in landscaping

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and insurance there's not really that economies of scale

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because um you know they're not saving any money doing it

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that way now we do have like preferred programs with certain vendors

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but at the end of the day say we did

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that with uh i don't know bfl we said okay

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and bfl says we're going to give you a great deal you're going to get the best deal

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that we possibly have and we say okay we're going to give you all our business then

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and we go to you and we say okay here's your deal

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and who's to say that's the best deal you could possibly have what

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if you went to another guy and got a quote from them

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and it came in 10 % cheaper right

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so I think in many ways like getting tied in exclusively to one vendor without going out there

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and shopping quotes around can actually lead to higher uh costs maybe the first year it doesn't

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but when people get complacent they get you know the costs tend to just creep up over time right

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and i think you're probably in a better position where you're not tied into anyone exclusively

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uh you're still getting a bulk deal

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because you're giving them a lot of business

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but uh we don't have to have to use any particular vendor for anything

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because we're not you know we don't have any kind of exclusivity agreement with them

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that forces us to use them

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when we might be able to find a better price from someone else okay thank you yep

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uh let's see sonia did you have any more questions anyone else anything

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going once going twice well thank you very much guys i

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really appreciate oh we've got one more here last second eva i think you're on mute there still

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yeah very quick i'm just going back to roof maintenance and you suggested an annual report

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We have our building and surroundings power washed every year,

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and periodically we have the roof treated about once every three, four years.

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Now, should a report be a different company?

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Or could it be the same company that does the power washing?

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It's probably going to be a different company.

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Like I would, I would recommend like a roofing company to do that.

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And you might even want to use somebody that's, I mean, sometimes when a roofing company does it,

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their, their report is, oh, the roof's falling apart.

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You need to get a new roof.

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Right.

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So it's got to be somebody you trust and somebody that maybe even just like an RRO, somebody that doesn't actually do the work.

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They're just like a roofing consultant.

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Okay.

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And you could also use engineers for that, but you're going to pay more to have that done.

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So it depends on the age of the roof and how much work is needed. But

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if it's coming towards the end of its – I'll use

434

an example like your depreciation report say you've got a 25

435

year old roof your depreciation report says you have a 25 year old roof

436

and it needs to be replaced now

437

and your insurance company is going to look at that

438

and say well i want you guys to replace your roof

439

otherwise your premium is going to go up i've seen this a lot

440

so what you would do in this case it's like well you know

441

that that roof you can probably get 35 years out of it

442

because you've maintained it you've done all the right things you

443

just go out You get a report every year from someone credible that you can give to your insurer and said, listen, we know it says the depreciation report says X,

444

but the reality is we have another 10 years on this roof.

445

So that's kind of a scenario that you would like that in.

446

Thank you.

447

I'd leave it to the experts for sure.

448

Anything else?

449

Anyone? anyone any questions well thank you

450

so much i appreciate you guys oh there's one more coming

451

in all right good i like questions is there a way

452

for council to work with the fire department directly are electrical

453

um yeah for sure yeah of course you can call the

454

uh call the fire department they would they could come out

455

and uh you know take a take a look at things

456

for you i don't know how quickly they'd get over there

457

but if there's a concern like a concern about electrical definitely um you know just if you

458

if you have a concern about electrical i would i would

459

advise you to probably get an electrician in first to take

460

a look at it before raising a bunch of flags and

461

and calling the fire department but um yes you can absolutely reach out to them

462

as a council and and if you have concerns anything else anyone

463

okay well i think that'll we're going to call it a day then

464

and probably the next one that we will do will be

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Top 10 Tips to Keeping Strata Insurance Premiums Low”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: strata, insurance, quote. This video has 464 sentences and 5782 words to shadow. The speech runs for 37:33. The speaker talks at a natural 154 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
stratum noun	/ˈstɹeɪ.təm/	One of several parallel horizontal layers of material arranged one on top of another.
deductible adjective	[dɪˈdʌktəbəɫ]	Eligible to be deducted.
insurer noun	/ɪnˈʃʊɹ.ɚ/	One who insures.
suite noun	/swiːt/	A group or train of attendants, servants etc.; a retinue.
sprinkler noun	/ˈspɹiŋklɚ/	Anything that sprinkles.
strata noun	/ˈstɹeɪtə/	Condominium unit, condominium building, condominium title.
bylaw noun	/ˈbaɪ.lɔ/	A local custom or law of a settlement or district.
depreciation noun	/dɪˌpɹiːʃɪˈeɪʃən/	The state of being depreciated; disparagement.
inspection noun	/ɪnˈspɛkʃən/	The act of examining something, often closely.
leak noun	/liːk/	A crack, crevice, fissure, or hole which admits water or other fluid, or lets it escape.
mute adjective	/mjut/	Not having the power of speech; dumb.
hose noun	/hoʊz/	A flexible tube conveying water or other fluid.
broker noun	/ˈbɹoʊkɚ/	A mediator between a buyer and seller.
ingress noun	/ˈɪŋɡɹɛs/	The act of entering.
plumbing noun	/ˈplʌmɪŋ/	The pipes, together with the joints, tanks, stopcocks, taps, and other fixtures of a water, gas, or sewage system in a house or other building.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
go out verb		To leave, especially a building.
go up verb		To move upwards.
find out verb		To discover, as by asking or investigating.
go off verb		To explode.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
come up verb		To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.
drive back verb		To force someone or something to retreat or move away; repel.
fall apart verb		To disintegrate, to break into pieces.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Why don't you have one when they're now mandatory?
If it's, you know, around your deductible.
Am I misunderstanding it?
I'm just going to close the chat here.
I'd leave it to the experts for sure.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if your strata manager won't source
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	i've been taking · we've been trying
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've seen · we've seen · haven't seen
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are started · be replaced · be changed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 179 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: earthquake /ˈɝθkweɪk/, worthwhile /ˌwɜː(ɹ)θˈwaɪl/, thumb /ˈθʌm/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: insurer /ɪnˈʃʊɹ.ɚ/, depreciation /dɪˌpɹiːʃɪˈeɪʃən/, inspection /ɪnˈspɛkʃən/, restoration /ɹɛstəˈɹeɪʃən/, specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/
Long words — get the stress right: deductible [dɪˈdʌktəbəɫ], depreciation /dɪˌpɹiːʃɪˈeɪʃən/, mandatory /ˈmæn.dəˌtɔɹ.i/, aluminum /əˈlu.mɪ.nəm/, restoration /ɹɛstəˈɹeɪʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like stratum, deductible, insurer.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Top 10 Tips to Keeping Strata Insurance Premiums Low (Vancouver, BC) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?