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Hi all,
I’m hoping to pick the brains of the FlatChatters minds about a fairly odd situation that’s emerged in our little 5-lot scheme. I’m the strata treasurer (elected by proxy, as I was overseas during the AGM), and while doing some routine housekeeping I stumbled across what looks like a grey area in the execution of our Strata Management Agency Agreement.
At our April 2025 AGM, the agreement with the current strata manager was listed as “renewed.” The AGM minutes say it was signed, and that was that. Later this year, when I asked for a copy of the agreement (for normal treasurer due diligence), I noticed something curious:

Only the secretary signed the agreement at the AGM;
The strata seal and the chairperson’s attesting signature weren’t added until 7 October 2025.

So, for all practical purposes, the only valid execution happened six months after the AGM.
As most of you know, under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 the affixing of the seal has to be attested by two authorised committee members. In our case, that didn’t happen until October. Which raises the obvious question: did the strata manager actually have authority to manage the scheme during those six months?
When I queried this, the strata manager told me:

It was “acceptable” that only one committee member had signed at the time;
A six-month delay in applying the seal was “fine”;
And that “NCAT would rule” the agreement was enforceable anyway because the intention was there.

I thanked him for his view but said I intended to get an independent opinion from a strata lawyer, mainly because the dates and execution steps seemed objectively out of alignment with the standard requirements.
Two days later, out of the blue, all committee members received a letter from the agency advising that they won’t be renewing their contract when it expires in April 2026.
I’m trying to keep this factual and level-headed. I’m not alleging misconduct — but it does feel like a genuine compliance hiccup with potentially real implications, especially since no one disclosed the execution delay in the AGM minutes and the treasurer (me) wasn’t informed.
My questions for the forum:

Has anyone dealt with a similar delay or partial execution of a strata agency agreement?
Is a six-month wait to apply the seal considered benign, or is this actually a material defect?
Would an agreement be considered “in force” from April despite incomplete execution, or only once the seal was properly affixed in October?
And does notifying the committee that they won’t seek renewal sound… coincidental? Or par for the course?

Any thoughts or experiences would be very welcome. I’d love to sanity-check my understanding before I pay a lawyer to unpack it properly.
Thanks all!

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[Strata Ken]

A resolution was passed to re-appoint the strata manager, therefore that is what the owners wanted.

Things go wrong, mistakes are made and the agreement wasn’t actually signed until later.

Now what someone could argue is that because the agreement wasn’t signed then it could be argued that some things done by the manager, and the payment of fees were not authorised, but someone would want to do so, and they would go to NCAT.

What the strata manager is saying is that in that situation then NCAT would simply rule that the agreement should be treated as signed a lot earlier. I would expect that they can. They will respect what the owners want.

The strata manager is a bit annoyed because he suspects that rather than leave this, that they will end up at NCAT which will be a nuisance and cost money.

So he is going to get rid of you, because he doesn’t like you anymore and suspects that you will keep raising problems that he feels are frivolous.

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