Why "Just Send Me an Email and Go Ahead" Can Get Your Condo Into Trouble
A pipe bursts in a common area closet. A director on-site tells the plumber to go ahead, sends a quick email saying "supply and install, go ahead," and the job gets done that afternoon. No formal quote, no signed agreement, no board vote. Weeks later, the invoice comes in higher than expected and the board is asking what exactly was approved and by whom. This scenario plays out in self-managed condos more often than most boards realize, and it can create real financial exposure.
Verbal approvals are still binding
Here is the part that catches self-managed boards off guard. A contract does not need to be a signed, formal document to be enforceable. Under Ontario law, a verbal agreement, or even an exchange of a few short emails, can create a legally binding contract as long as there is an offer, an acceptance, and something of value being exchanged. According to a legal overview from JK Leiman, a verbal contract in Ontario is just as binding as a written one. What changes is not whether it is enforceable, but how hard it becomes to prove exactly what was agreed to if a dispute comes up later.
That means "supply rocks" scrawled in a text message, or "go ahead and fix it, send me the invoice" in an email, is not a casual conversation. It is a contract. And once the work is done, the condo corporation is obligated to pay for it under whatever terms can be shown to have been agreed to, whether that was written down clearly or not.
If you are unsure how long a signed contract itself should be kept on file once the work is done, Stratastic's condo records retention guide >> walks through the recommended timelines.
The problem is not the contract, it's what's missing from it
The plumbing-and-drywall scenario is a good example of how this goes wrong. A director approves a plumber to fix a leak, and in the process of that repair, drywall needs to be cut open and later patched. If nobody specified upfront who was doing the drywall work, at what price, and to what standard, the board ends up with two separate invoices from two different trades and no clear paper trail showing what was actually approved for either one.
The fix is not complicated. Even for a same-day emergency repair, get three things in writing before work starts: the specific scope of what is being done, the price or a clear estimate range, and the expected timeline. A one-paragraph email confirming these three details takes two minutes to send and gives your board something concrete to point to if the final bill does not match expectations.
A well-meaning director can still bind the whole corporation
This is the part that surprises a lot of volunteer directors. Individual board members do not have authority to approve work or make decisions on behalf of the corporation outside of a properly held board meeting with quorum. According to a governance overview from Miller Thomson, condo corporations in Ontario are governed collectively by the board as a whole, not by individual directors acting alone, and directors have no individual authority to approve requests outside of that structure.
In practice, this creates a real gap. A director acting with good intentions, approving an urgent plumbing fix on a Saturday because nobody else was reachable, may not have had the authority to bind the corporation in the first place. But the vendor who did the work in good faith based on that approval still expects to be paid, and courts generally do not let a corporation off the hook just because internal approval processes were not followed. The condo may still owe the money even if the board never formally voted on it.
What self-managed boards should do differently?
You do not need a lawyer for every plumber or electrician call. But you do need a habit. Before any contractor starts work, even for a same-day fix, get the scope, price, and timeline confirmed in writing, even if it is just a two-line email back and forth. Make sure whoever is approving the work on the board's behalf is actually authorized to do so, and if there is any doubt, get a quick sign-off from at least one other director before work begins, not after.
Self-managed boards do not have a management company catching these gaps before they become a problem. That responsibility falls on the directors themselves. A short, specific email before the work starts costs nothing and protects your board from exactly the kind of dispute that shows up on an invoice weeks later, when the work is already done and there is nothing left to negotiate. Related Reads
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