Burnaby apartment buzzers: Metrotown, Brentwood, Edmonds, Lougheed and SFU

You rent a two bedroom in a tower by the SkyTrain, at Metrotown or Brentwood or Lougheed. The lobby panel calls one phone, and it is not yours. Or it calls yours, and you are the person who gets every courier, every guest and every 7 am delivery for the whole suite.

This page is the Burnaby version of the problem. The general picture for the region is in the Vancouver apartment buzzer guide. What is different here is who you rent from, how many suites are shared, and how many residents arrived with a phone number from somewhere else.

What kind of building are you in?

The City of Burnaby expects most of its growth in four town centres. Metrotown is the regional city centre, which the City calls Burnaby downtown. Brentwood, Lougheed and Edmonds are the other three. The City lists SkyTrain stations on two lines, the Expo and the Millennium, and housing that includes towers, walk-ups and townhouses.

Up on Burnaby Mountain there is a fifth kind of place. UniverCity is a residential community beside the SFU Burnaby campus, and student housing sits on the campus itself.

Towers and walk-ups like these usually have a lobby panel that dials out, often called the Enterphone in BC whatever brand is on the faceplate. A visitor finds your name or keys in your suite code, and the panel places an ordinary phone call. How to check the brand and what that changes.

Who changes the buzzer number in a Burnaby building?

This is where Burnaby differs from a city of big rental companies. The City says rental units house nearly 40% of Burnaby households. Its 2020 Housing Needs Report found that in 2016, 64.1% of renter households were in the secondary rental market. That means suites owned by individuals and rented out, including condos, townhouses and secondary suites.

So if you rent in a Metrotown or Brentwood tower, there is a good chance your landlord is one owner, not the building. The lobby panel is run by the strata, not by your landlord. BC government guidance says the strata corporation manages and maintains the common property, and that the work is usually done by the strata council or a strata property manager it hires.

Renting from an owner adds one step, but the strata already knows you exist. Under the Strata Property Act a landlord must give the strata corporation a copy of the Form K signed by the tenant within two weeks of renting to them. Your landlord is the link, so start there.

If the building sends a form, here is what to write in each box of the Enterphone request form. If a stranger answers when you buzz your own suite, the panel still has a previous tenant on it, and that is worth reporting as an access problem. How to get it fixed.

Will the Burnaby buzzer call my number?

Burnaby sits inside the Greater Vancouver local calling area, along with Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey, the North Shore and the Tri-Cities. A 604, 778, 236 or 672 number from anywhere in that area is a local call from a Burnaby lobby.

That matters because many panels dial on a building line restricted to local calls. A mobile from Alberta, Ontario or overseas is long distance from that line. The panel tries, the line refuses, and your phone never rings.

There is a BC wrinkle too. 778, 236 and 672 are not only Lower Mainland codes. The Canadian Numbering Administrator lists 672 as a province-wide overlay, and 778 was extended to cover all of British Columbia in 2007. So a 778 number from the Interior is not automatically local in Burnaby. The area code alone does not tell you.

What about roommates and SFU students sharing one panel number?

The panel holds one number per suite. In a shared two bedroom, that number belongs to one person, and the other person depends on them for every delivery. Where a building offers a second number at all, it only rings after the first one rings out, usually 20 to 30 seconds later.

Students feel this most. The City Housing Needs Report counted about 8,320 SFU Burnaby students living in Burnaby in 2019/2020, roughly a third of the campus. If you share a suite near campus, the people in it change more often than the number on the panel does.

Every turnover means another email to the landlord, another pass to the strata manager, and a stretch where the buzzer still rings someone who has left. What to do when a roommate moves out.

If you live alone, have a local number and the panel already rings you, you do not need anything. Keep it. The problem starts when two or three people share one line, or when the number on file is not local.

How to get every phone in a Burnaby suite ringing

1. Get one local number for the suite BuzzMeBro asks for your postal code and checks for a number inside your building local calling area. New Greater Vancouver numbers come from 236, 778 or 672. If nothing is available for your address, it says so before it takes a card and offers a waitlist.
2. Add everyone in the suite Up to 4 phones. Each person confirms their own number by text, so the buzzer only rings people who agreed to it. Out-of-province mobiles are fine here, because the panel dials the local number, not theirs.
3. Send one request Renting from an owner, send it to your landlord and ask them to pass it to the strata manager. In a rental tower, send it to the property manager. Give your suite number and the new number in full.
4. Test it from the lobby Buzz your own suite. Every phone should ring. Answer on one and press the door digit. The digit is set per building, so ask rather than assume 9.

BuzzMeBro in Burnaby

BuzzMeBro works across Greater Vancouver, Burnaby included. Your suite gets one local number. You hand it to your landlord or building once, and from then on a buzz rings every phone in the suite at the same time. Whoever is free answers and opens the door. A buzz is an ordinary phone call, so nobody installs anything.

When a roommate moves out, you swap their phone for the new person on the BuzzMeBro website. The number on the panel stays the same, so the landlord and the strata manager are not involved a second time. It is $9.99 a month or $95.00 a year per suite, not per person, and customer data is never sold or used to train AI, as the privacy policy commits. More Vancouver area buzzer guides. Check availability for your Burnaby building.