I can see two problems with the D&BPAct. The first is that someone decided that building consultants were part of the problem and should be eliminated. So no provision was made for the registration of building consultants even though some of them had been helping strata plans for decades. The work they did had to be placed with engineers or architects who had no knowledge of particular buildings that might have been using the same consultant for ten years.

Another problem with the Act is that it assumes that unqualified residents are incapable of making long-term decisions correctly. False – many buildings have long-term owners who well understand the issues with the building and trust the tradesmen they have used many times before. Tradies who take short cuts needn’t expect return business nor personal recommendations.

Let’s not forget the flow-on effect of these costs to renters, who are increasingly noisy about rent inflation. Compliance costs create upward pressure on the costs associated with investment properties, which inevitably make their way through to the cost of renting.
Many property investors will try to absorb costs rather than increase rents and lose a good tenant. But eventually the costs reach a point where the investor has to sell or increase rents. And we talk of “investors” as if they are trying to make money out of renters. Many are not. They are making their property available for rent while they work interstate or overseas, or while they wait to sell a property that’s tied up in a deceased estate. But they can’t afford to do that if the rent doesn’t cover the expenses.

I’d love to see $80,000, our best quote is $200,000 per lot. We are seeking more quotes.

There are obvious problems with what is happening. We have about 40 bathrooms that have water leakage. If it was a home then we would pay about a $1,000 to use something like Megaseal or retile the shower at about $5000, and it would usually bey fix any problems.. The regulations say that the waterproofing has to be one continuous seal, so all fixtures are to be removed, all tiles removed and the sealing and retiling. This was something like $30-40k per bathroom and they aren’t big bathrooms.

Balconies are a disaster. They are to be stripped back to concrete, checked for concrete cancer and then everything is replaced. Brick walls on balconies need to replaced, as now required to be reinforced.

When I first read the tender, I thought the engineers response to all problems was to replace everything, but that is what they have to do.

Anyway, many of our owners couldn’t afford to pay even $50-100k, so we are all going to be removed kicking and screaming from the building, due to an appointed strata manager. It isn’t going to be nice when eventually we have to do everything and the only choice is to sell to a developer at less than half what people have paid.

Hi Strata Ken

I do think there is a political aspect to this issue. The DBP Act was developed by the Office of the Building Commissioner, introduced into Parliament by the NSW Minister for Better Regulation and passed by the NSW Parliament on the 10 June 2020. There are proposed amendments to the Act due this year, 1 July 2026.

The bodies which have the most influence however, are Engineers Australia (EA), the Strata Community Association) (SCA  NSW),  – it might be possible to access them via your Strata Managers, Owners Corporation Network (OCN) and put forward suggestions.

Another critical issue is that the engineer or architect who under the DB&P Act has overall responsibility for the project has to guarantee the outcome for 10 years. If a large strata building gets its windows replaced (say) and the DB&P law applies, the window company only guarantees the outcome for 6 years. Therefore the engineer or architect has to carry the risk that the new windows will have problems for the final 4 years. So they over-engineer the project – to minimise the risk that they will liable to repairing the failed water-proofing (say) 8 years after the project is completed. The resulting new windows will be very high quality, but will obviously cost a high amount to achieve this outcome, or more than may be needed and sensible!

As an example, our strata complex is 35 years old and has 35 units. One of the units has a tiled terrace that is about 40sqm. Around two years ago, water appeared to be leaking into the ceiling of the unit underneath. We asked our consulting engineering firm for a brief on how best to deal with the apparent leak. The cost came in at a projected $120K to lift all the tiles, replace the waterproofing and re-tile (new tiles) and by the way, replace the balustrade because it was 10cm short of current standards. For a leak? The explanation was that the job could only be done under the supervision of an engineer because it involved waterproofing, and the balustrade came into the picture because the tiles came up to the lower edge of the balustrade which brought it into the scope of works. Needless to say, we didn’t go ahead with that job. Rather, we had the whole terrace re-grouted at a cost of $19K. So far, no further leakage has been reported. Something is seriously wrong here.

ruben wrote:

The cost came in at a projected $120K to lift all the tiles, replace the waterproofing and re-tile (new tiles) and by the way, replace the balustrade because it was 10cm short of current standards. For a leak? The explanation was that the job could only be done under the supervision of an engineer because it involved waterproofing, and the balustrade came into the picture because the tiles came up to the lower edge of the balustrade which brought it into the scope of works. Needless to say, we didn’t go ahead with that job. Rather, we had the whole terrace re-grouted at a cost of $19K. So far, no further leakage has been reported. Something is seriously wrong here.

You are probably not allowed to do that anymore. The whole thing is ridiculous. We have 40 leaking bathrooms, but all of them will be the shower. We could replace the grout for about $1000 a shower, or retile the shower for $5,000 but that is not allowed, we have to remove all tiles in the bathroom, which means removing the fixtures, seal the whole bathroom and replace the tiles and fixtures at at least $30,000 per bathroom. I’m not certain what happens if we have one badly leaking shower because that puts us above the $5K limit.