Category: Owners Corporations

How to Improve Transparency

 

The Myth of the Untouchable Strata Contract: Negotiating for Improved Transparency

You are sitting in a boardroom or on a video call negotiating or renewing a new strata management contract. The manager or director tendering for the appointment is making many verbal promises. Everyone is satisfied, the contract gets signed, and months later you realise those promises from the manager aren’t happening. Why? Because they were never written down.

If you talk to apartment owners or committee members anywhere in Australia, you will hear the same frustration echoing across many buildings − a lack of trust. Promises, they will tell you, were made and not delivered.

In a similar vein, committees look at their quarterly financial statements, notice a hefty bill for common property repairs, and realize they have no idea what was done. To compound their worry, the description in the bank statement simply states: General Repairs.

That does not mean anything improper has occurred. But without visibility, the human mind naturally fills in the blanks. A committee can become suspicious that something has gone wrong. A manager, meanwhile, can become frustrated because the committee appears to be questioning routine work or delaying decisions.

This friction is exacerbated by a lack of transparency. Good transparency isn’t just a protection for the committee. If the records clearly show what was done, who supplied it, what it cost and what authority existed for the expenditure, there is much less room for suspicion.

The Contract Is Not “Untouchable”
If you are having similar issues as a committee member or lot owner, the good news is that you don’t have to wait for the strata industry to act. You can fix this to a considerable degree at the exact moment it matters most: at the negotiating table before signing or renewing your strata management contract.

The Strata Community Association (SCA) is a powerful voice for the strata management industry. Their manager appointment contract templates are professionally designed with consultation and input from state departments such as your state government’s department for Consumer Affairs. Good intentions abound. The risk here is that it may also create a lopsided power dynamic, where committees feel they have no choices.

This is not the case. While you cannot legally hack apart or rewrite the core pre-printed text of an industry template, you are not forced to accept every word of it. Any information filled in by the applicant managers themselves, such as proposed hourly rates and fees, is open to negotiation. But standard strata contracts also include room for custom additions, usually tucked away in a small space under a dedicated “Special Conditions” clause or something similar.

This means you don’t need a high-priced lawyer to rewrite the whole document to protect your building. Instead, you can bring the applicant’s verbal promises into contractual reality. If they promise a 24-hour response time for committee emails, for example, your response should be something like:  Please draft that into the Special Conditions before we sign.”

Before you go through the negotiation stage, your owners corporation and your committee should have consulted and prepared a list of those of your requested additions that you would like the manager to accept. The manager will in all probability also have a prepared list ready to put on the table. Then when the negotiators reach an agreement a final contract is submitted to your committee members for signing. You have solid grounds for protesting if there is anything missing under Special Conditions.

A reputable manager who intends to deliver will have no difficulty accommodating reasonable performance clauses. However, special provisions proposed by either party must comply with the law, including the requirements of each state’s strata legislation. Where wording is unclear or its legal effect uncertain, seeking legal advice can help prevent misinterpretation and future disputes.

But What Exactly is a “Special Condition”?
This is where things become interesting. The terminology is not the same throughout Australia, and I have not been able to examine every current SCA management agreement because some of the documents are available only to members.

Before proceeding any further, we need to be cautious about assuming that a Special Conditions clause in one state operates in the same way as one in another. Not only may procedures vary, but they may also use different terminology to describe what are essentially the same things.

The material I have been able to locate does, however, show that the space allocated to negotiations is not just a place for harmless housekeeping details. It is a powerful negotiating tool.

The point is that State jurisdictions use different terminology and contractual arrangements. That is why I have set out the information below as a starting point rather than presenting it as a definitive national comparison.

SCA Management Agreements by State: – “Special Conditions” or Equivalent

Victoria
Clause 2.4 /previously Clause 11.5 – Special Conditions.

Queensland
Reference Schedule Item J/K – Special Conditions, including amendments to the Standard Conditions.

Tasmania
Item 6 – Special Conditions.

New South Wales
Attached Special Conditions – SCA expressly permits agreed amendments to the template by attached special conditions.

South Australia
SCA Strata Management Agreement – special-conditions provision to be verified from the current member document.

Northern Territory
No separate current SCA NT Management Agreement template located; SCA SA/NT currently identifies SCA NT’s management agreement as also the South Australia Strata Management Agreement.

Western Australia
SCA Strata Management Agreement Template – current 2026 version is member-only; provision to be verified.

Australian Capital Territory
SCA standard agreement exists, but the equivalent special-conditions provision still needs to be verified.

This is an area where I would welcome corrections from anyone who has access to the current documents for their states.

The important point is not that every state uses the exact words “Special Conditions”. It is generally the case, however, that management agreements contain some mechanism by which their agreement can be supplemented with extra provisions beyond the standard template. This mechanism is available to strata managers and also strata communities via their committees.

The Power of Advocacy
For many years now, advocacy groups on both sides of a strata management contract have been advising owners corporations and committees to take advantage of the special provisions clauses to negotiate for amendments to their contracts. The emphasis in the past has been concerns around insurance-related fees and commissions.

Advocacy campaigns around the lack of transparency in strata insurance have been successful in highlighting the issue throughout Australia. In Victoria, the contact has been amended with additional clauses offering several alternative commissions or upfront fees, from which the owners corporations can select their preference.

New South Wales has taken a much stronger position of moving away from insurance commissions for strata managers, replacing them with upfront fees paid by their strata clients.

There is still scope, though, for campaigning to ensure that manager appointment contracts are delivering contractual obligations for sufficiently high standards of financial transparency.

Sample Transparency Topics For Your Special Conditions
To improve operational clarity, a committee can negotiate with the intending manager for a dedicated transparency list to be inserted directly into the contract’s Special Conditions clause – or your state’s equivalent of that clause.

For example, a list locking into the contract a broad range of transparency requests could include something like the following sample topics. There is no suggestion that these short examples are necessarily relevant to your strata building’s particular needs.

  1. Real-Time Financial and Banking Visibility
    (a). PDFs of original quarterly bank/DEFT statements forwarded to the committee’s members within seven days of issue.
    (b) Quarterly Business Activity Statements complete with all associated lodgement attachments forwarded to the committee for approval, prior to submission to the Australian Tax Office.
  2. Maintenance Verification of Expensive Invoices
    Invoices exceeding $xxxx should be accompanied by date-stamped, before-and-after photographs (where practicable) prior to payment.
  3. When an Insurance Policy is Being Negotiated
    The policy will not be approved by the committee until they have sighted the intended policy itself, and not just the Certificate of Currency.

When a manager agrees to having improved financial transparency locked into their contract, it benefits both parties.

For the committee, it will end the anxiety of flying blind and being obliged to accept past, present and future budgets through insufficient information.

For the manager, it provides total protection against concerns of mismanagement due to insufficient transparency.

By seizing control of you state’s version of Special Conditions in your management contract, both strata committees and strata managers can build a better partnership.

This is not expert legal or financial advice. It is an opinion based on publicly available information. Circumstances and legislation vary between Australian States and Territories, so committees should check the current requirements applying to their own strata building and always obtain professional advice where appropriate. This website is independent and fully self-funded.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

Apartments Are Not Just Investments

An apartment is a home, not just an investment product

By Mary R.

 

Much of the anxiety about apartments in Australia comes from measuring them against the wrong yardstick. They have been sold for years as primarily investment products, expected to behave like houses and to compound in value like scarce land. That expectation was always a mismatch.

When resale prices disappoint, it’s easy to decide that apartment purchases are a mistake. What has failed, however, is the false promise attached to them in the first place, not the homes themselves.

Apartments can attract scare campaigns after headline stories about major construction failures. Those publicised failures are truly awful and financially disastrous for their lot owners. Shoddy building work and poor standards, however, also occur in the construction of free-standing houses, with owners often forced to bear the brunt of costly repairs.

Most strata buildings are established and in suburbs where people live genuinely good lives, close to all the amenities and infrastructure that make their location desirable, and often where the cost of a stand-alone house would be too expensive for most of us to contemplate..

Apartments are not about choosing a consolation prize. Many of us are opting for quality of life and the freedom to travel and explore, o.ver the stress of a restrictive and very expensive long-term mortgage.

Strata buildings with apathetic lot owners and poor strata managers can look rundown and neglected in a surprisingly short time. If our buildings are starting to look like slums, for example, that’s a problem we must tackle head on before things gets worse. If we don’t, the value of our apartments will almost certainly fall.

A building with adequate levies and a viable and growing maintenance fund protects both the lifestyle of everyone living in it and whatever value remains in each apartment.

The trade-off is real
Apartments don’t usually enjoy the same levels of capital gain as other forms of housing, particularly where house prices are being driven by the escalating value of land. Some lot owners, particularly in Melbourne, are carrying losses. I am one of them.

But an apartment can have negative or stagnant value growth and still be an excellent home.

Apartments are similar in some ways to vehicles. A family car can start to lose value as soon as we sign the sales contract. That doesn’t stop us buying one when it meets an essential need. We accept the running costs, fees and maintenance because, when the time comes to sell it, we can say: “I got my money’s worth out of it.”

The same principle can apply to a home. We shouldn’t assume that every form of housing will automatically increase in value enough to match or surpass inflation. What matters is what we get from the home while we live in it.

Wages and rents rise over time. For someone who bought an apartment early in their working life, a mortgage can become progressively less burdensome as wages increase. Renters, however, have no such protection from a rising rental market.

In June 2005 the minimum gross wage was $484.40 per week. By 1 July 2015 it had risen to $656.90, and from 1 July 2026 the national minimum gross wage is $1,004.90 per week. The increase over 21 years is more than double, while over the most recent ten years it was about 53%. [Fair Work Commission]

Fair Work Commission fact sheet 2026

Now compare that with apartment rents between June 2016 and June 2026.

Apartment median rental increases, June 2016–June 2026

Adelaide:      $285–$550 — +93%
Brisbane:      $375–$660 — +76%
Canberra:     $400–$580 — +45%
Darwin:        $440–$650 — +48%
Hobart:         $285–$520 — +82%
Melbourne:  $380–$600 — +58%
Perth:            $335–$700 — +109%
Sydney:         $525–$780 — +49%       [Domain Rental Report 2026

[The Domain Rental Report 2016 can be read online]

The figures illustrate an uncomfortable difference. Rents can rise as the costs of materials, transport, labour and other inputs rise, while people dependent on wages do not necessarily see their incomes keep pace with housing costs.

It is difficult to know how much of the dramatic increases in places such as Hobart, Adelaide and Perth reflects genuine increases in costs and how much reflects a shortage of apartments available for rent. But when something as essential to human life as a home is treated primarily as an investment product, these pressures are hardly surprising.

Why good committees matter
When an apartment building has declined or stagnated in value, the market is not necessarily the only factor involved.

The future of Australian cities is going to involve considerably more medium-density housing. Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and other growing cities cannot continue expanding indefinitely through detached housing alone. Apartments are already part of that future.

The question is not whether we should have apartments. The question is how we make them good, durable, well-built and well-governed places in which to live.

For future owner-occupiers especially, the appeal should be straightforward. An apartment can provide a good home at a price that leaves more room to enjoy life, or simply avoid taking on a mortgage that dominates the rest of our lives. For retirees, it can also provide a way of remaining in the suburb and community we already know and love.

None of that depends on the market value rising every year.

A well-maintained building is more likely to attract people who want to stay, whether they own their apartment or rent it. It protects the quality of life of the people who live there and, as far as anything can, protects the financial position of its owners.

That is a message that doesn’t require us to pretend that apartment prices never fall or stagnate. Nor does it frighten people away from a form of housing that will become increasingly important as our cities grow.

It simply tells the truth: An apartment is a home first and foremost. And the people best placed to make it a good home are the people who live there and own it, working through their buildings’ committees and, where applicable, their contracted  managers.

 

This is not expert legal or financial advice. It is an opinion based on publicly available information. Circumstances and legislation vary between Australian States and Territories, so committees should check the current requirements applying to their own strata building and obtain professional advice where appropriate. This website is independent and fully self-funded.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

The Strata Manager’s Role: Does it require professional qualifications?

By Mary R.

If you’ve just joined your first strata committee, there are two questions worth contemplating for a few minutes. The answers may affect how much you can rely on your manager’s advice and whether you can just accept it. Let’s start by tackling the first question.

Question One: Is a strata manager an administrator or a professional?

There two ways of looking at the strata manager’s role:

Administrator
An administrator generally:

    1. Carries out decisions made by someone else – typically in our case the committee – within the authority given to them by legislation or their service contract, which may allocate some decision-making tasks.
    2. Performs administrative functions such as processing payments, keeping records, issuing notices, circulating minutes, answering correspondence and arranging and/or attending meetings. Much of this work is repetitive and increasingly capable of being assisted by specialist software and AI.
    3. Does not necessarily need the body of specialised knowledge, formal education and supervised practical experience traditionally associated with a profession.
    4. In terms of amateur versus professional, are they also professional because they earn income for their work, similar to the difference between amateur and professional sportspeople?
    5. Admin officers and assistants are expected to act at all times in a professional manner, including with intergrity, reliability and in the best interests of their clients.

Professional
A professional, on the other hand:

    1. Exercises independent judgement and expertise that the client relies upon precisely because the service provider has both experience and a relevant tertiary qualification.
    2. Works within a body of specialised knowledge that has been stringently tested all the way through to recognised qualification levels.
    3. May be subject to higher professional standards and accountability through a regulatory or professional body with the ability to register and sanction its members.
    4. Spends a lot of their own time updating their knowledge and skills through various available avenues. Their knowledge base must always be current.

The Qld Government, on its web site is clear about it: a body corporate manager is engaged to provide administrative services to the body corporate. And this is the part that may surprise new committee members: there is currently no formal training or qualification of any kind required to do the job in Queensland. (Qld Govt)

Thus the Queensland description of a body corporate manager appears to fit the basic administrator model: the manager is there to provide administrative services and to carry out the body corporate’s decisions with integrity and efficiency, all of which does not require tertiary-level education.

But that is not necessarily how the role works in practice. Strata managers everywhere, not just in Queensland, routinely provide advice about legislation, contracts, insurance, disputes and the proper way for a committee to proceed. Committee members often rely on that advice because they don’t have the necessary specialist knowledge themselves.

And therein lies the problem.

If the manager is only an administrator, then the committee is often the one exercising the judgement and making the decisions. But what happens when the committee does not have the knowledge necessary to make that judgement? Someone must fill the gap. That someone is often the manager.

That doesn’t necessarily make the manager a professional in the formal sense. But it does mean that a role that is labelled administrative can also be performing functions that committees assume is carried out to professional standards.

And now for the second question.

Question 2: Should there be a minimum qualification standard before someone is entrusted with other people’s money and legal obligations?

The person your committee may rely on to interpret legislation, negotiate contracts, deal with disputes and manage funds may have entered the role with no more formal preparation than you had when you accepted your volunteer position.

Perhaps not even that. Some new committee members receive a “welcome” information pack or USB stick from the outgoing committee. It will usually contain, among other things, a clear outline of duties and how to provide good governance for your building, as well as other related topics.

I don’t think the answer here is particularly difficult. It is an argument about basic consumer protection.

Queensland currently sets no formal qualification bar but many strata managers pursue it themselves.

New South Wales is working towards requiring that to be classed as a strata manager after the preliminary “apprenticeship” period, the full Certificate IV in Strata Management is required.

Victoria has currently taken a middle-ground approach, but its requirement is only for part of the above Certificate IV – five units rather than the 18-unit full qualification expected in other jurisdictions. It won’t necessarily provide the level of knowledge that a committee needs.

So, Question One: administrator or professional – what is my answer?
I’m happy to leave that question open. It is a reasonable question, and there are arguments on both sides but titles alone don’t dictate the levels of competence.

I don’t think the question can be resolved simply by looking at the job description. The same day-to-day role can be viewed either way, and different states and territories have taken different approaches. The situation is considerably more complicated than simply saying that some states regulate managers more than others.

But I find the second question much harder to leave open.

So, Question Two: Should there be a minimum tertiary-level qualifications and training standards for strata managers?
In my view, the answer is yes. Queensland should have them, while New South Wales and other states already have them, will have them, or are reviewing their options. Victoria currently has a half-hearted approach, possibly still under review, which fails to provide committees with enough protection to trust their strata manager’s guidance and advice unequivocally. This is where Victoria, while intending to increase the level of trust that committees can place in their strata managers, must avoid ending up with a regulation that is riskier for committees if that increased level of trust is misplaced.

———————————————

This website is fully independent and self-funded. It doesn’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point. The author resided in Victoria and is most familiar with Victoria’s strata legislation. Always check and use the current legislation governing your own state. State legislations vary and are state-specific. Links to each state’s own strata-title Act are provided on this “Introduction” page.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

Strata Insurance and Why It Needs the Committee’s Input: Part One

By Mary R.

 

Most strata management committees (SMCs) are not interested in becoming insurance experts. This is particularly the case in smaller strata-title buildings that may have three or less members on their committees.

But insurance is usually a major expenditure, and the SMC is approving that expenditure on behalf of all the lot owners. That is a reasonable ground for scrutiny and it is outlined in the following list of questions. They are not in order of importance and are intended as suggestions that can be reasonably asked of your broker.

1. Who is your insurance broker, and who owns it?
This is worth knowing because the broker’s name on renewal documents doesn’t need to tell us about its wider corporate structure. Within the insurance industry, a clear hierarchy shapes how capital, underwriting, and distribution interact. The broker’s role is to liaise with clients, collect at least three quotes, make recommendations and draw up the final insurance premium. That does not mean, however, that each level of the hierarchy is necessarily independent. In many cases there is an interlocking relationship, as a subsidiary, for example, of a “parent” company.

For example, Whitbread, a leading insurance broker, has a current Financial Services Guide (FSG) that states that Whitbread is a subsidiary of Steadfast Group Ltd. For strata insurance, it specifically states: “The following strata underwriting agencies we may utilise are also subsidiaries of Steadfast:

• CHU Underwriting Agencies Pty Ltd (inclusive of Flex Insurance)
• Axis Underwriting Services Pty Ltd

Additionally, Steadfast holds a minority interest in QUS Pty Ltd. (Whitbread FSG p.3) 

Whitbread expressly states that it operates independently and that its staff are not directed or incentivised to place insurance with Steadfast-associated entities. Other well-known underwriters with associated entities may make similar disclosure claims.

Read the FSG
An insurance broker’s Financial Services Guide (FSG) is worth reading before an SMC makes decisions about insurance. It explains matters in plain English, including the broker’s commissions and fees, relationships with underwriters, the capacity in which the broker is acting, and the procedures for complaints and disputes. For example: WhitBread: FSG;   Gallagher: FSG; Axis Underwriting

There are others as well of course, and some of them may include a disclosure statement on their website similar to this one:

“We are not independent, impartial, or unbiased pursuant to section 923A of the Corporations Act because:
• We may receive remuneration, commission, or other benefits when we provide personal advice to you in relation to insurance products and other financial products; and/or
• We may have associations or relationships with issuers of insurance products and other financial products.“

The chain between the SMC and the insurer looks like this:

Committee — Manager — Broker — Underwriter — Insurer & Premium Funder

2. Who is actually underwriting your insurance?
You know already that the strata manager and the broker may be getting either a commission or a fixed fee, but did you know that the underwriter may also be getting a commission? For example, CHU’s FSG (Current, pub. Jan. 2023) states:

Commission, profit share and other financial benefits/incentives
QBE pays to us [i.e. Chu] a commission for each policy issued or renewed. The commission amount is 12.5% to 30% of the base premium paid by you (excluding any government taxes, duties and levies). The commission amount is included in the total amount you pay for your policy and not in addition to the policy.

The underwriter’s role is long standing, to the point where it would be hard for the insurance industry to act efficiently without it. Underwriters manage and distribute insurance products for the insurer, although the precise arrangement varies. It is appropriate to have their commission or fee included in the base insurance premium. Some underwriting agencies are part of larger insurance groups.

When you are comparing three quotes and they differ, however, it is useful to know where that difference lies and how it was calculated. Again, keep a copy of your current underwriter’s Financial Service Guide (FSG). I have found the guides provided by underwriters useful. For example: Chubb: chubb-strata-insurance-pds.pdf

Potentially, we are about to see more expensive insurance policies due to climate change. Being fully aware of government taxes and duties, such as GST and Stamp Duty, as well as industry commissions and fees, will be increasingly important.

There is nothing inherently wrong with an underwriting agency sharing a business relationship with a broker or insurer, for example. What matters from a governance point of view is that the relationship is known and taken into account when considering the recommendation.

3. Who is being paid for their services, and how much?
This is probably the question that attracts the most attention. The broker’s insurance commission will vary, depending on the arrangement. The broker may also receive a commission from the premium funder, with its premium-funding commission range being, perhaps, 0–3% of the funded premium.

It has been a long-standing arrangement for the insurer to pay brokers a commission and the brokers could then, if they chose, divide it with strata managers, often splitting it half and half. This has changed in recent times, with the strata managers being given the whole commission in some cases, while the brokers charge separate fees.

If, however, the strata manager now decides to accept a set fee as outlined in their service contract, and that fee is equivalent to, for example, 10–20% of the base premium, the broker may still receive a commission from the insurer. Depending on the particular arrangements, this could increase the overall cost to the strata client.

NSW has been considering reforms to strata-manager commissions following a 2026 review by the NSW Productivity and Equality Commission. The review presented several options, including phasing out insurance commissions paid to strata managers.

NSW State Parliament

NSW  Govt

4. Who is the premium funder? Is the insurance premium being financed?
This is an easy one to overlook because it has its own entries in bank statements. If the premium is paid through a premium-funding provider such as IQumulate, the strata community is effectively borrowing money to pay the insurance premium upfront (as required) and then repaying the amount by instalments. It is broadly similar in concept to choosing to pay some other large annual expense by instalments, although premium funding is a separate financing arrangement and normally involves interest and fees.

Premium funding will become increasingly necessary in future if strata lot owners are to afford to pay their insurance policies without financial stress. Since insurance represents a very large proportion of annual expenditure, spreading the payment over ten or twelve months makes perfectly good financial sense.

But the committee should know the total amount it will have to pay, how many repayments and the interests charged for what is effectively a loan. One sighted example had a charge of 10% plus GST, based on the policy’s previously calculated total cost. And don’t forget the broker’s fee added to the premium funder’s percentage. This is an additional insurance expense that may not be included in pie charts and graphs.

5. Have we seen the actual policy — or only a Certificate of Currency (CoC)?
A CoC is useful, but it is not the insurance policy. It tells us that insurance exists and gives us some important basic information. But it does not contain all the detailed terms, conditions, exclusions, excesses and limitations that determine what we have actually bought. Nor does it contain the list of commissions, fees, levies, taxes and other charges that can substantially increase the amount ultimately payable.

Assuming that you are constantly being given just the CoC and not the policy, it is essential for an SMC to say something like this to the broker or strata manager if necessary:

“Thank you for the Certificate of Currency. We would also like a copy of the actual Policy together with its wording and schedule and with the complete payable amount, before we approve the renewal.”

The CoC tells us what we have insured and for how much. The policy ideally should list all expenses and add-ons.

6. Have you seen the three quotations?
If quotations have been obtained, the committee should see them. That doesn’t mean the committee has to choose the cheapest one. It should be able to compare the alternatives and understand why one was recommended by the broker over another and not just accept “this is the one we recommend”.

7. Is the insurer being given an accurate description of your building?
The SMC should be satisfied that the information being relied upon is accurate. When the broker issues a policy proposal for renewal, it is essential that the SMC receives a copy of that proposal so that they can check the accuracy of the previously supplied description of their building.

It is not unusual for SMCs to “rubber stamp” insurance documents. That is not good governance. They should be checked. It should include your building’s construction materials, the number of lifts, levels, basements and floors, additional amenities, estimated replacement costs and any risks or defects.

 

———————————————————-

This blog is fully independent and self-funded. It doesn’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point. The author resided in Victoria and is most familiar with Victoria’s strata legislation. Always check and use the current legislation governing your own state. State legislations vary and are state-specific. Links to each state’s own strata-title Act are provided on this “Introduction” page.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

 

 

 

 

AGM meetings

 

 

There is one event each year when every lot owner is asked to spend a little time thinking about how their building is run: the Annual General Meeting, or AGM. These days it is usually held online.

A thick PDF attachment arrives in your email inbox. It looks complete, professional, carefully prepared. If you are a long-standing lot owner for the building, it may also look very familiar. Most of the pages in the lengthy AGM notice are likely to be part of a standard template that rarely changes over the years.

Two reports, one from the chairperson of the committee and one from the strata manager, are new and should be read. The latter in particular may contain vital information.

Other important new pages, however, are those devoted to financial statements, including past and estimated annual budgets.

By the time the new budget estimates for the current financial year reach the committee and lot owners for a tick of approval in its ballot box, their contents have already been shaped, checked and printed.

Budget estimates are usually built on previous years’ spending, adjusted for inflation, updated for new contracts such as insurance, and amended to include forthcoming maintenance work. Other items, however, can look remarkably similar from one year to the next. Categories such as General Maintenance often appear to have been rolled over with only minor adjustments. That does not necessarily mean they are wrong, but it does raise a useful question: were the figures worked out again from scratch this year, or simply carried forward from the previous year with small adjustments?

Here’s how that matters in practice.

When you look at a budget item such as General Maintenance, it’s easy to treat it as a fixed expense. But what does it actually consist of and why does the committee have no knowledge of any “general” maintenance carried out? One likely answer is that many strata management contracts include provisions allowing the manager to hire a technician or tradesman without first seeking three quotations each time because of the small cost involved. At other times the issue, such as a blocked pipe, might have required immediate attention.

Alternatively, you may get an item called General Plumbing Maintenance or General Electrical Maintenance in the budgets with no other explanation. 

This avoids delays that can end up being more costly than the original expense, which is fine. But it also means that it can sometimes leave owners feeling uninformed about spending decisions.

This is where committee members play a role. It is not to query the budget line by line. But it is okay to expect that a paper trail for those smaller expenses does exist, perhaps in the form of an email to the committee with a photo, while invoices can be posted to the committee’s portal if they  have one.

And then there’s the approval process. By the time a budget is presented in a Notice of AGM, it has usually passed through multiple layers: manager preparation, software input, auditing and printing. So, what you are seeing is not the raw financial data of the building. It is the version of it prepared, checked and presented by the managers and their administrative systems before owners ever see them. It can and does happen many times that the strata committee also gets to see the past expenditure and proposed budget for the first time when the printed agenda arrives. 

This may create the assumption among owners that there is no point in attending the AGM each year because everything has already been decided. All too often, by the time the lot owners who do attend work through a long list of ballot boxes that have to be verbally voted on or with a show of hands, there is not enough time left in their Zoom or Teams meeting to allow for broad discussion.

As many of you would know, the first 45 minutes of an online meeting is free. After that with Zoom, if you want longer meetings you have to upgrade to Zoom Pro, which is currently Aus$19.90 per month, $118.80 pa. This subscription is typically shared among the manager’s clientele of numerous strata buildings so there should be only a small additional charge.

With Teams it’s different. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription (and most companies do) there is no further charge for a longer meeting.

But this is the point where you have to look at your Strata Manager’s contract. In some contracts the strata manager’s time for chairing a meeting is typically free for the first 45 minutes or one hour, depending on the contract, then typically $240-$280 per hour after that. If, however, the meeting is held after 5.00 pm working hours, the manager’s fee per hour may be doubled.

For many strata managers, the latter is their “get out of jail card” and they may look a bit relieved when they can declare after 45 minutes that time is up and the meeting is about to close. The reason they give is that it is necessary in order to save the owners corporation money. They are the good guys.

However.

For the lot owners who have tuned in, the real meeting was about to move on to the general discussions. After all, it is usually only at the one general meeting every year that they have the opportunity to speak face-to-face (sort of) with their manager and the members of the committee, or to share their views with other lot owners. Suddenly the meeting is closed, and that is that for another year.

In addition, the meetings are often held during Australian working hours to avoid charging double for the manager’s time as chairperson of the meeting. For a lot of owners, that timeslot is simply not practical. Then of course there are the interstate and overseas lot owners, whose clock is completely different and those lot owners who are shy about speaking if they are not confident of their English.

When you take all of that into consideration, is it really a surprise if you log in to you AGM and find that you are the building’s only lot owner who has?

 

——————————————————

This blog is fully independent and self-funded. It doesn’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point. The author resided in Victoria and is most familiar with Victoria’s strata legislation. Always check and use the current legislation governing your own state. State legislations vary and are state-specific. Links to each state’s own strata-title Act are provided on the “Introduction” page.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

 

Victoria’s New OC Regulation

The missing linkS in every strata scandal story

by Mary R.

Welcome to the first longer article in my independent resource series for strata committees. I hope you find it useful. It is an opinion piece based on private research. I have included source links at the end of the article. I am not a lawyer or an accountant and do not offer legal or financial advice. This is a not-for-profit blog.

Victoria has introduced one of the biggest shakeups in owners corporation law in nearly two decades. An expert panel, convened through the Engage Victoria consultation process, spent part of 2025 reviewing the Owners Corporations Act 2006. Numerous submissions were made, and the state government has now signalled that for the first time, it will introduce a licensing regime for owners corporation (OC) managers. On paper, that sounds like what the Victorian OC sector needs.

Then comes the detail. Rather than requiring OC managers to complete the full Certificate IV in Strata Community Management, the qualification purpose-built for the job, the government has accepted a watered-down version: a handful of units, not the whole certificate.

The list below for the new regulations is based on information provided by Consumer Affairs Victoria for registered managers and Officers in Effective Control (OIEC). (The substituted vertical layout better suits mobile phones)

The new regulations at a glance
Initial training: Registered managers and OIECs must complete five core units of the Certificate IV in Strata Community Management. Deadline: 30 June 2027

Register Anyone running the day-to-day operations of an OC management business must register as an OIEC. Existing registered businesses have until 1 August 2027. Deadline: 30 June 2027

Annual CPD Managers must complete around five CPD (Continuing Professional Development) activities each year. From: 1 April 2028.  The five CPD activities per year can include written assessments, seminars, webinars and some in-house learning sessions.

The five CPD activities per year can include written assessments, seminars, webinars, some in-house learning sessions.

Who else gets this deal?
Try to imagine any other regulated profession making the same pitch. An electrician arguing they should be licensed on five units of the electrotechnology certificate because a full apprenticeship is inconvenient for employers. A financial adviser wanting partial credentialing because the full diploma will cost them more money. Or howabout a bookkeeper with no credentials because they can add up and subtract?

None of these arguments would get past a first meeting with a regulator, let alone become government policy. Yet OC managers – who hold signing authority over building insurance, control multimillion-dollar maintenance and capital works funds and interpret legislation that determines how disputes and levies are handled – are being told that a fraction of the relevant training is enough.

This isn’t a trivial administrative role. An OC manager’s decisions directly affect the largest asset most Victorians will ever own. Getting it wrong on insurance adequacy, defect liability timing, or fund mismanagement can cost owners tens of thousands of dollars, or worse, leave a building underinsured when something goes wrong.

The lot owners paying for this arrangement
The people whose assets are on the line are, in many buildings, more qualified in their chosen careers than the managers being asked to maintain those assets, both physically and financially. Lot owners will consist of investors and owner occupiers who are engineers, teachers, skilled tradespeople and many other professionals who spent years and often tens of thousands of dollars earning full accreditation in their own fields.

These are the same owners now being asked to hand management of their asset, and trust in the professional judgement behind it, to someone the government has decided only needs to know part of the vocational syllabus. That’s not a small inconsistency. It’s a direct question of whose convenience the regulation is designed to protect: the government’s moderate costings for regulating a huge and growing sector of the state, or the owners whose money and property are actually at stake.

What about the WA comparison?
Western Australia (WA) has taken the opposite path to Victoria. Its 2025 regulatory reforms set a full, completed Certificate IV in Strata Community Management as the benchmark for anyone acting as a strata manager or principal of a strata management business, with the requirement phasing in through a transition period to November 2027.

A narrower, reduced-unit pathway exists in WA too, but it’s not a general concession to the industry – it’s reserved for people who already hold a comparable licensed qualification, such as an existing real estate licence.

WA is already on the path to requiring the full qualification. There’s no publicly documented data yet showing in what way WA strata firms have been affected because of the full Certificate IV requirement – largely because the compliance deadline hasn’t even arrived.

NSW already answers the “partial units” question
If you want to see what a genuine, defensible partial-qualification pathway looks like, NSW already has one – and it undercuts the case for Victoria’s approach rather than supporting it.

NSW runs a tiered licensing system. At the bottom is the Class 2 Assistant Agent: an entry-level, closely supervised role. An Assistant Agent needs only five units from the Certificate IV in Strata Community Management to start (previously 7 units), plus three further units each year as ongoing professional development. Crucially, an Assistant Agent cannot run a scheme independently and works under the direct supervision of a fully licensed agent.

To become a licensed Class 1 Strata Managing Agent – the person actually authorised to manage an owners corporation’s affairs – the full Certificate IV is required: 18 units in total, 14 core and 4 elective. And that more senior Class 1 licence, the only one that can authorise trust account withdrawals, also requires prior two years working as a Class 2 agent.

In other words, NSW’s system already contains exactly the kind of unit pathway the Victorian industry has been lobbying for – it’s just not attached to the role that actually manages your building and your money. NSW’s answer to “should partial training be enough?” is yes, for trainees – and no, for the person who “holds the keys”.

Full Certificate IV courses are not prohibitively expensive
The online course offered by SCA’s Strata Education, has the full 18 units:  SCA Members: $2,990; Non-Members: $4,500. (All prices as of 12 July 2026). Certificate IV | Strata Community Management

And Sapere has estimated for the new amendment that: “The cost of attending a CPD session is $55 per hour”.  www.thinkSapere.com i.e. $275 per year.

What was actually driving the need for reform in the OC management sector?
Having properly qualified OC managers does matter. Consumer Affairs Victoria’s complaint data on the sector shows persistent, recurring themes: undisclosed commissions, proxy vote manipulation at meetings, and governance failures around how funds and records are managed.

These aren’t cases produced by a handful of bad actors slipping through an otherwise sound system – they’re a pattern, significant enough that the government’s own review treated it as evidence the existing (unlicensed) framework isn’t working.

A licensing regime introduced in direct response to that pattern of harm is a strange place to introduce a qualification standard weaker than the one already operating in NSW and WA.

To professionalise an industry means finishing the job
Strata living now accounts for roughly one in four Victorians, according to a state government source, and that share is only growing as the state’s apartment stock ages and densifies. The government’s own review acknowledged that complaint volumes to Consumer Affairs Victoria remain persistently high, with hidden commission and governance failures recurring themes. This is precisely the environment in which under-qualified managers do the most damage, and precisely the environment in which a genuine, complete professional standard matters most.

If the sector is serious about being treated as a profession, it must accept what every other regulated profession accepts: the qualification is the qualification, not a negotiable subset of it. It’s hard to defend a small partial qualification as the foundation of Victoria’s first licensing regime, introduced specifically because the old, looser standard wasn’t good enough.

Why Victoria’s Strata Manager Qualification Falls Short
The Victorian government has chosen the 5-unit option seemingly on the grounds that mandating the full certificate course will create additional costs, both for the student, as mentioned above in the course and training fees, but also in terms of government oversight to ensure the new regulations are being adhered to.

Another measuring stick was the number of complaints to VCAT and its Tribunal. To what extent, for example, will having an 18-unit full certificate justify the cost by being more successful in reducing VCAT’s caseload than a less-costly 5-unit partial certificate? Although the figures supplied for comparison are the results of careful calculations by professionals they are, nevertheless, estimates.

Burnout and undertraining are the same problem
Industry commentary points to a second, compounding culprit: burnout, driven by the sheer number of properties a single OC manager is expected to handle, anecdotally cited as up to 600 or more apartments. Data supplied by MRI Software show that 60% of strata managers work more than 38 hours a week, and 19% work more than 51 hours, while 33% of strata managers changed employers in a single year.

But an overloaded portfolio and a thin qualification aren’t rival explanations. They’re the same problem from two angles. A manager with only five units of an eighteen-unit qualification has less depth to fall back on when that workload gets heavy. Overwork degrades judgement, and a partial qualification means there was less sound judgement to degrade in the first place.

Fixing the licensing standard without addressing caseload treats one symptom while ignoring the other, and neither problem excuses the government settling for a fraction of the training the job requires.

The scale of reponsibility
Even taking a conservative figure of 400 lots makes the scale of responsibility clear. Cotality’s Home Value Index put the median unit value in Melbourne at $636,769 as of June 2026. On that basis, a Victorian OC manager handling the governance of 400 lots potentially with a combined resale value of worth hundreds of millions – even more for those managers handling about up to 800 units.

These are national workload averages applied to a single city’s property values, so the figures are illustrative rather than exact – and if anything, conservative, since Melbourne unit prices sit well below those of Sydney. But even on a cautious reading, one person is nominally accountable for the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in property, spread across hundreds of separate owners, buildings, insurance policies and compliance obligations. That is a far more plausible driver of customer dissatisfaction.

Managers who are properly trained and formally qualified are likely to feel more confident handling the scope of what their role demands. More confidence typically means less stress. Undertrained staff thrown into high-stakes, high-responsibility roles are the ones most likely to burn out and leave.

It’s worth being clear about what professional education would and wouldn’t fix here. Burnout in most vocations tracks workload, not qualification level. Raising education standards alone won’t relieve a manager carrying a heavy load.

Committees carry a legal risk
But that isn’t the only problem worth solving. Under Victoria’s Owners Corporations Act 2006, legal responsibility for compliance rests with the owners corporation itself. The committee – typically a handful of volunteer lot owners with no strata management expertise – administers this on the OC’s behalf, while the manager is only ever engaged as their agent. It is the committee that faces so much of the underlying legal exposure. How is it fair to expose volunteer OC committees to heavy legal responsibility without also guaranteeing they get a high level of professional assistance?

That is precisely where an undereducated manager becomes a liability rather than a convenience. A committee that cannot trust its manager’s judgment is forced either to take advice on faith – carrying legal risk it doesn’t know it’s carrying – or to independently verify decisions when it thought it had engaged a professional manager specifically to avoid having to do that.

Neither is what a volunteer committee signs up for. Fully qualified managers let committees rely on professional judgment with some confidence, rather than second-guessing every decision on assets worth millions of dollars.

Most lot owners – especially the ones living overseas – don’t have a clear picture of how different the training standards are across Australia. And even if they did, it’s not obvious it would change much at the point of purchase. Queensland apartments are selling like hotcakes, for example, and nobody pauses mid‑auction to check the strata manager’s framed certificate. When the capital gains are good, ignorance is fine.

That’s not an argument against regulation, it’s the argument for it. If buyers can’t or won’t do the vetting themselves, even when the information is available, the protection has to be built into the licensing standard rather than left to individual due diligence. In Victoria, where apartment prices have stagnated, lot owners don’t have the luxury of indifference and would benefit from being able to assure potential buyers that the regulatory standards for the management of their future asset are in the top level of  international standards.

Government-mandated strata manager certificate requirements in Australia (July 2026)

VIC 5 units of Certificate IV
NSW Full Certificate IV
QLD None mandated
WA Full Certificate IV
SA None mandated
TAS None mandated
ACT Moving to NSW standard
NT None mandated

Victoria’s 5-unit requirement sits closer to Queensland’s unregulated end of the table than to the full Certificate IV standard NSW and WA have adopted.

This blog is fully independent and self-funded. I don’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, you should always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point and always verify the specific, current legislation governing your own state. 

APPENDICES

(1) Strata management requirements internationally (July 2026)
 

England No government licence. Professional qualifications are common but voluntary.

Canada (Ontario) Government licence, approved education, examinations and supervised experience.

USA Varies by state. Some require education, exams and licensing; others have no licensing.

India No mandatory licence. Qualifications are generally determined by employers.

New Zealand No specific strata manager licence. Industry qualifications are common but voluntary.

Singapore Accredited certificate, legislation exam, experience, annual CPD and code of ethics.

China (Mainland) No national licensing system specifically for strata or apartment managers. Large developments generally employ professionals.

Hong Kong Mandatory education, experience and licensing under the Property Management Services Ordinance, with a licence issued by the Property Management Services Authority (PMSA).

South Korea Apartment complexes require a licensed Housing Manager (Jutaek Gwallisa). Managers qualify through a national examination and prescribed practical experience.

Taiwan Condominium management companies and management personnel must meet statutory qualifications and hold government registration or permits, plus ongoing training.

(2) Australian sources

(3) Overseas government sources

England – UK Government guidance and legislation on residential property agents (no statutory licensing system).
Ontario – Condominium Management Services Act, 2015 and the Condominium Management Regulatory Authority of Ontario (CMRAO).
USA – State licensing agencies (e.g. Nevada Real Estate Division).
India – No national licensing legislation for property managers.
New Zealand – No dedicated body corporate manager licensing legislation.
Singapore – Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Strata Management accreditation framework.
China – Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) property management regulations.
Hong Kong – Property Management Services Authority (PMSA).
South Korea – Korean Ministry of Government Legislation, Multi-Family Housing Management Act.
Taiwan – Ministry of the Interior, Condominium Administration Act.

(4) Recommended printed media sources

“Victorian watchdog fails to deregister any strata managers despite thousands of complaints” The Age – 4 June 2026.
“Secret commissions: Strata managers pocket millions from insurance deals” The Age – 6 June 2026. Keywords: insurance kickbacks, conflicts of interest, hidden payments, PICA Group lobbying.
“Owners left in the dark as strata managers charge unlawful fees” The Age – 8 June 2026.
“Consumer Affairs Victoria accused of ignoring systemic misconduct in strata industry” The Age – 10 June 2026.
“Victorian government launches review into strata industry after Age investigation” The Age – 12 June 2026.
“Strata managers using proxy votes to entrench control, owners say” The Age – 15 June 2026.

 

——————————————————

This blog is fully independent and self-funded. It doesn’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point. The author resided in Victoria and is most familiar with Victoria’s strata legislation. Always check and use the current legislation governing your own state. State legislations vary and are state-specific. Links to each state’s own strata-title Act are provided on the “Introduction” page.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.
 

 

 

Is strata software making better decisions or just faster ones?

 

 

These days, many owners corporations are serviced by strata management companies using some form of computer software. Committee members as well as all lot owners know there is an online portal where they can view documents, check their own levy balance or read meeting minutes. Behind the scenes, however, these systems do far more than simply store files.

Good software has obvious advantages. It keeps records together, makes it easier to find old documents, produces financial reports and perhaps also prepares some BAS statements. This helps strata managers keep track of hundreds of buildings at once. I have read that thanks in part to AI software, a single strata manager is expected to handle as many as 600 to 800 apartments (with help from a lot of support staff such as accountants, senior managers and data specialists).

But there is one thing software cannot do. It cannot tell whether the information being keyed into the platform is accurate. Like the old cliché about earlier computer systems: garbage in, garbage out.

If an expense is allocated to the wrong account, every financial report that includes that expense will faithfully repeat that mistake. The software hasn’t made an error. It has simply recorded what someone told it.

One one occasion I asked for copies of our BAS statements. They came as summaries and mixed in with them was one BAS summary from a different strata building with a similar name. Human error exists and we have all been guilty of it at some time but it can have an impact on total costings.

That is why committee members should never assume that a neat report is automatically a complete or accurate one. Modern software can produce impressive graphs and summaries, but they are only as reliable as the information entered into the system in the first place.

Pundits will fairly argue that there are many crosschecks in today generations of software that will pick up any human errors or glitches. That may be true, but I have seen one or two serious errors in software-generated financial statements that seem to have slipped through its inbuilt checks and balances.

There is another issue that committees should keep in mind. Software is very good at recording events. It is not so good at explaining them.

This is where committees still have an important role. Rather than simply accepting reports at face value, members should feel comfortable asking questions such as: “Why is the budget allocation for building insurance so much more expensive this year than last year?”.

Technology is a useful tool, and most committees these days are so used to it, they would struggle without it. But it is still only a tool.

One thing to keep in mind is the speed at which AI programs are rapidly evolving. If there are any limitations to AI strata management applications, the developers may have already dealt with it by the time you read this.

 

——————————————————

This blog is fully independent and self-funded. It doesn’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point. The author resided in Victoria and is most familiar with Victoria’s strata legislation. Always check and use the current legislation governing your own state. State legislations vary and are state-specific. Links to each state’s own strata-title Act are provided on the “Introduction” page.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

 

Why committee work is more than attending meetings

 

 

Most people think being on a strata committee means turning up – or tuning in – to a meeting every now and then, reading a few reports and making a few decisions. On paper, it doesn’t seem like much. The surprise comes after you join, or at least it did for me.

The meetings are actually the easy part. Most of them are conducted via Zoom or Teams and there is usually someone who is an expert on how to run those platforms.

The real workload happens between meetings, in the ongoing flow of emails, documents and questions. Some of these can be small issues. The owners corporation manager emails three quotations for a repair job and asks the committee which contractor should be engaged, for example.

Or the committee is asked to consider whether expenditure should be approved, whether a proposed repair represents good value, or whether the building’s maintenance priorities need to change.

The work isn’t usually difficult. More often, it’s that steady trickle of smaller jobs that new members don’t expect. Before long, you’re answering emails in your lunch break, comparing quotations in the evening, or thinking about the building’s financial stability while everyone else in your family is watching Netflix. That’s the invisible part of governance.

Individual committee members usually take on whatever they’re comfortable with. One committee member might monitor their building’s maintenance, another might like to keep an eye on the finances, while someone else handles most of the emails. It usually happens without anyone planning it. Over time, everyone settles into a routine.

Can there be tensions and disagreements at times? Yes, there can be. There are bound to be differences of opinion and there will be times when you have to compromise.

Fortunately, strata managers can offer independent advice, based on their knowledge of the Act’s regulations and their personal – and sometimes quite extensive – experience. At other times you may need to seek outside professional advice requiring specific knowledge or skills.

It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. If the same repairs keep appearing year after year, is there a larger maintenance issue? Can the owners corporation afford to deal with that maintenance issue this year or can it wait until next year when there will be more funds in the Maintenance Fund? These are the sorts of issues that can quickly become serious if ignored, and that need good governance from the committee, taking into the account the buildings short- and long-term needs.

 

——————————————————

This blog is fully independent and self-funded. It doesn’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point. The author resided in Victoria and is most familiar with Victoria’s strata legislation. Always check and use the current legislation governing your own state. State legislations vary and are state-specific. Links to each state’s own strata-title Act are provided on the “Introduction” page.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

 

Who manages your building? (And why it may not be who people think)

 

If you ask many rental residents who manages their building, the answer is often immediate: “the strata manager.” It is an understandable assumption. They send the emails, issue meeting notices, arrange the repairs, issue breach notices and often appear to be the only consistent point of contact. Their address, email and phone number will be on every strata-connected notice they receive. There is also, on strata buildings in some states, a prominent notice at the entrances to their buildings, displaying the managing agent’s contact details.

Some strata management companies also use the words “Owners Corporation” or “Body Corporate” somewhere in their business names, which may reinforce the perception that they are the building’s owners corporation itself. That is one common misunderstanding in the strata world.

The reality is that no single person manages the building. Instead, there are three overlapping roles that share responsibility in different ways.

(1) At the top sits the owners corporation. This is not a company in the traditional sense. It is simply all of the lot owners collectively. It is the legal entity that owns and is responsible for the common property. When major decisions are made, such as approving a special levy, authorising significant works, authorizing new contracts for maintenance or managment, or setting the annual budget, they are made on behalf of this group.

Because it is not practical for all lot owners to manage day-to-day decisions, a committee is elected at every AGM. The committee is where most of the practical governance happens. It reviews budgets, signs contracts, considers maintenance issues and oversees expenditure within its delegated authority.

(2) Then there is the strata manager. This is the role most people interact with directly, and for that reason it is often assumed to be the “control centre” of the building. In reality, the strata manager is an external contractor delegated by the owners corporation to carry out administrative and coordination tasks. They implement decisions, manage records, hire contractors, prepare financial reports, and assist with compliance processes.

Over the past decade, much of the day-to-day administration in the larger strata management companies is handled by office staff and accountants through software systems tailored for strata management. The software can assist in or take over many management chores. This includes generating financial reports and AGM documentation, issuing minutes of meetings, collecting levies and quickly dealing with unpaid levies.

I am a partial fan of strata management software. I have found that overall, if it is used to its full potential, it can greatly improve the level of transparency between managers and strata committees. The downside is that all those charts and summaries can be used as a substitute for the actual fully-detailed documents that committees need to examine in their governance role.

If you have the original bank statements for the strata account, for example, it is easy to check if the summaries have diverged from what appears to be the reality. This does not necessarily mean that there is something wrong with the summaries or graphs, but it does mean that a follow-up question is necessary.

(3) The next role worth considering is that of onsite managers. They should be hired after consultation with the strata committee. Because they are “at the coalface” they handle many common problems and requests, such as lost keys and noisy neighbours. They also regularly inspect the building for any urgent or developing maintenance problems.

This is where a grey area emerges, because in smaller apartment buildings (between four and 50 lots for example) there is rarely enough levy income to afford a fulltime or part-time onsite manager. The contracted cleaners, who are usually onsite for only a few hours a week, are not engaged to act as de facto caretakers or onsite managers.

In Australia, strata managers are not onsite managers, as they may be in other countries. They can’t be. Most of them handle a number and variety of buildings. Further, under the terms of their contract, they may not be required to regularly or occasionally visit the building, although many do. There is a reason for this reluctance.

Since Covid 19, there has be a drift away from strata management staff working in large head offices and many managers now work from home. Commercially, this is a universal trend and it’s potentially a good one since it should reduce overheads. In theory at least, strata managers could live anywhere, including interstate, and stay in touch by phone and email, so long as they are registered with the state and meet its additional insurance indemnity, character and financial requirements.

In practice, strata managers working interstate and familiar with their own state’s strata regulations and Act, will discover that each state has its own Act and regulations and they can be remarkably different, often crucially so.

So who, then, is going to do those regular inspections around the smaller buildings that in larger buildings are done by onsite managers? The residents usually, including not only onsite owners and committee members but also the tenants. The communication between tenants/lot owners and managers often forms an informal reporting network, of which the committee may not always be fully aware.

This is where the committee’s role becomes important, even if it is not always visible to residents. The committee is meant to ensure that decisions are not simply being implemented efficiently but were appropriate in the first place and not just a knee-jerk reaction to an aggressive resident.

It also means asking whether budgets are realistic and whether the information being presented truly reflects the actual condition of the building, particularly as it ages. All too often its maintenance is portrayed by the manager as up-to-date until suddenly it isn’t.

Information often arrives in processed form, such as summaries and reports, rather than raw data. So much so that by the time a decision request reaches the committee, it can seem that there is nothing left to do except “rubber stamp” it.

This is not necessarily a problem. Most strata systems rely on this structure to get things done in a timely manner. But it does mean that good governance depends on the willingness to ask what lies behind the information being presented.

Who recommended this contractor? What were the alternatives? What actually happened in the incident that is being described in vague terms? These are not confrontational questions. They are what separates passive approval from active oversight. And that is why understanding the management structure matters.

 

——————————————————

This blog is fully independent and self-funded. It doesn’t offer legal or financial advice. When such advice is needed, always consult a professional in those disciplines. Use the links provided here as a starting point. The author resided in Victoria and is most familiar with Victoria’s strata legislation. Always check and use the current legislation governing your own state. State legislations vary and are state-specific. Links to each state’s own strata-title Act are provided on the “Introduction” page.

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.

So you’ve joined a strata committee. What does that mean?

By Mary R.

Melbourne city skyline with illuminated buildings and a river bridge at dusk

 

This is not expert legal or financial advice. It is a suggested guide based on publicly available information in government and industry documents. Circumstances and legislation vary between Australian States and Territories, so committees should check the current requirements applying to their own strata building and obtain professional advice where appropriate. This resource series for strata committees and lot owners is independent and fully self-funded.

 

Most people don’t join a strata committee expecting drama or complexity. It usually starts quite simply. Someone at an Annual General Meeting (AGM) says they’ll nominate you, or you put your hand up because it seems like a reasonable way to contribute. to the overall wellbeing of your building’s residents.

Then, a few weeks later, you start receiving emails from a strata manager, and a portal login arrives in your inbox. Suddenly you’re expected to be part of the decision-making structure for a building that often represents significant shared property value and long-term financial commitments.

At that point, many new committee members ask themselves the same question: what exactly am I responsible for here?

The simplest way to understand it is this. The committee is not there to “run” the building in a hands-on operational sense. It is there to oversee and make decisions about how the building is managed on behalf of all owners. That distinction may sound subtle, but it shapes almost everything that follows.

The owners corporation is the legal entity that owns the common property and ultimately makes decisions affecting it, while delegating many day-to-day and operational decisions to an elected committee and, in most cases, to a strata manager acting within that framework.

Because it is not practical for dozens or hundreds of owners to make those decisions, the committee acts on behalf of the owners corporation between AGMs, within the limits set by legislation and any resolutions passed at those meetings.

A small group of volunteers may now find themselves dealing with budgets, maintenance decisions, contractor issues, insurance policy renewals, and correspondence that often requires a prompt response to quite detailed questions.

Most of this work arrives through a strata manager, usually via email or an online portal. Increasingly, strata management firms now use software platforms that organise everything into workflows. Maintenance requests may be logged as tickets and correspondence may be generated using templates. Financial records are often presented through ‘dashboards’ that summarise information in charts, tables and reports. These are then published in the committee’s online portal for their inspection.

This can improve efficiency and consistency, but it can also change how information is experienced by committee members. Instead of receiving a narrative explanation from a manager, you may receive structured summaries or system-generated updates. You might see statements such as “appropriate action was taken,” without detailed context of the underlying issue.

This reflects a possible combination of privacy obligations and the need to be seen as consistent with tenants and owner occupiers. For new committee members, it can sometimes feel distant, as though they are being informed about decisions, rather than directly involved in shaping them.

This perception leads to one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of committee work. You are not simply there to approve all-but-finalised recommendations. Rather, your role is to ask questions and decide whether decisions being put forward are appropriate within the committee’s authority.

That may include reviewing financial statements, invoices, quotations, receipts, or documentation relating to maintenance works. The level of detail varies from building to building and job lot to job lot, but informed oversight is a central part of the role.

For this reason, sharing responsibilities among committee members can be valuable, particularly given the time and detail involved. It also helps explain why many committees include retirees or people with flexible time availability, although there is no single typical profile.

For most committee members the learning curve is largely about knowing where information come from, what assumptions and industry-wide conventions sit behind budget items, what information has been missing from maintenance proposals, and how and why some contractors are preferred to others.

These are not technical questions. They are governance questions, and they are at the heart of the committee’s role.

Strata governance in Australia operates in a hybrid space. It is not a corporate board structure, but it is also not informal. It combines volunteer decision-making with paid management services, and increasingly sophisticated software systems. That combination can work effectively provided that committees remains actively engaged with the information being presented. Just because a procedure has been carried out repeatedly in the past does not mean that it should be assumed to be correct.

Keep in mind, too, that strata Acts are regularly updated and amended. Regulations can and do change.

To recap: if you take nothing else from your first experience on a committee, it is this: your role is not to do everything. It is to ensure that decisions, budgets and proposals put before you are properly reviewed. Once that becomes clear, the role often feels less overwhelming – and more meaningful.

In my next blog I will discuss misconceptions about who is actually managing strata buildings in Australia and why.

 

—————————————————-

Disclaimer: The translation tool generates using automated translation software. While every effort has been made by the tool to preserve the original meaning, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may occur. If accuracy is important for legal, financial, regulatory, or other critical purposes, the translation should be reviewed and verified by a suitably qualified native speaker or professional translator. In the event of any inconsistency, the original English version should prevail.